


Shards and Fairy Tales

by Oparu



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, Mirror Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:37:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of the Terran Empire, the Alliance took control of the Alpha Quadrant, subjugating the lesser races, including Terrans and Vulcans. Some Terrans, like Kathryn Janeway, work for the Alliance while others, like Beverly Howard, fight against them in small resistance cells. When Kathryn's work stumbles onto the secret to finding a ghost fleet, Beverly 'rescues' her and brings her to the Terran side. Intendant Ro looks for ghost fleet on behalf of her Empress while rebels and pirates scramble to claim it before something darker than the Alliance finds them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a dark story set in a mirror universe similar to that featured on Deep Space 9. The Terrans are a subjugated race and the Klingons, Cardassians and Bajorans rule.
> 
> This fic mentions (but does not show) that characters under 16 have had consensual sex. Prostitution figures prominently and major characters are involved. There are scenes of torture and violence. Major characters die.

**Prologue - The Market**

 _Kathryn_

Intendant Ro has no tolerance for tardiness. Kathryn Janeway, PhD, Terran scientist in the employ of the Alliance, hurries through the busy streets of the commerce planet. She'd only meant to buy a few things, erridinite, because it was so hard to find on Alliance worlds, and woori crystals.

She is distracted, as she often is, by the chaos and noise of commerce planets. They are dirty, crowded, lawless places and she always tries to avoid them. Kathryn is not comfortable in crowds, or with dirt. Her laboratory is clean, neat and that is the way she likes things. She is not capable of adapting to change or chaos. Science and her quiet little lab are all she has or wants. She serves the Intendant, keeps her head down and has time to study halo objects when she is not needed in the business of collapsing stars for the Alliance.

Kathryn tries not to think about the outcomes of her work. She lets it be numbers on a screen: radiation and fallout, not lives lost. At the end of the day, she has her mantra. Her father and sister are kept safe and live well because she is of use to the Alliance, and has been since she scored so well on the aptitude test they gave all slaves before assigning them value as children. If she doesn't continue to live and be productive, they'll suffer the fate of her mother: dying a slow death of disease and want.

She is almost to the spaceport, almost back to the cleanliness and quiet of the Intendant's station, when chaos comes up out of the market and runs after her.

Rebels, dirty, wild Terran rebels, bolt past her, boots thumping in the dust, firing phasers at the guards. The screaming crowd starts to flee moments before one of the multiple Alliance security points explodes.

Kathryn hasn't seen an explosion since she was a child, and the air catches fire around her and sucks her in. She puts her hands over her head, crouching and curling into a tight little ball against one of the buildings. She can't move, can't breathe and the air around her stings her lungs like burning sandpaper, tearing tissues and rubbing them raw.

Time stops, filling her perception with hell and darkness. Smoke comes later, and Kathryn slowly remembers that time is passing. The fire sears the rubble and with the smoke comes the acrid scent of scorched flesh. There are dead and injured people. Is she one of them? Is she waiting to die? Will it hurt? Are her nerves just waiting to inform her of the terrible pain of being burned alive?

Something cool grabs her wrist, then another hand- she knows now it is a hand- grabs her shoulder and lifts her up. Kathryn's eyes focus on the face of a Terran woman: bright blue eyes, red hair tied tightly back and old scars that mark her as someone who would have been beautiful. Perhaps enough to grace the Intendant's renowned harem, if she'd been fortunate enough to be found young, before she was scarred.

The woman's lips move, but Kathryn's ears are full of a dull hissing. She shakes her head, unsure whether to grab this woman as her saviour or demand to be released back to the Alliance and safety.

Unable to hear and too frightened to speak, Kathryn lets this woman drag her away from the horror of the explosion. Through dark alleys and crowds of onlookers, they disappear. Kathryn clings to her, the battered angel who pulls her from the attack, and when they stop, the woman tries to speak again.

The dim, back room of somewhere dingier than Kathryn has ever been is a refuge now. Shaking her head, Kathryn stammers something and the woman's gentle eyes soften in sympathy. A cool hand strokes Kathryn's hair back away from her ear.

Lifting a hand, the woman gestures for her to wait. She is speaking, but Kathryn understands none of it. Perhaps the woman is speaking to calm her, even though she cannot hear. A battered medkit emerges from behind a scrap of cloth and the tricorder that comes from it has seen better days, decades ago, when black and chrome had been used instead of sleek metal. As the woman scans her, Kathryn discovers her injuries along with her rescuer. Her hands are burned, so is her right leg and a significant portion of her right arm. A device flashes near her ears, and the hissing fades away. Sound returns, fuzzy and indistinct.

"I'm going to start with your leg. It's bleeding."

The woman's voice is soft and calming. For an agonising moment, Kathryn remembers her mother, who had been calm and gentle.

"Who are you?"  


* * *

 

 **Shards and Fairy Tales**

 _Beverly_

Death is easy. A knife, a disruptor, a poisoned piece of meat, a rope around the neck- all the living a person collects, everything they've seen and experienced, want and believe, is gone. It goes with them, vanishing in the same instant their brains stop working.

Beverly can tell when that instant is. She didn't go to medical school because she didn't score high enough. Unless they pass the intelligence screenings, Terrans are chattel: traded, used and forgotten about when they wear out like old boots. She might have passed one of those damn tests if her parents weren't already running and half dead by the time they reached the fringes. Out on the far edge of space, way out near the outer rim, no one cares who you are if you have the latinum.

Her father didn't have enough. He went back, and he's here, somewhere under the crushing arms of Alliance rule, but he's probably dust in the mines by now. Her mother lived a little longer; Beverly remembers her in that vague, childhood way. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's like something she'd write down, to try to remember. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's a story. Something from another life, long ago.

Glancing at the report again, the one she keeps reading at her elbow, she notes that Kathryn Janeway, Intendant Ro's favourite little scientist, passed her first intelligence screen at age seven, earning the right for her father to be released from the mines. When she passed the second, she saved her sister, who became a Terran houseslave. Houseslaves can work their way up to concubines and live a better life than the mines. Concubines sleep warm and dry at night.

Janeway hasn't seen her family in years. She must trust blindly, as all chosen Terrans do, that her family is safe. Beverly has the official report which holds the Alliance version of events. Edward Janeway does simple strategic planning for a Terran refugee camp. He's a level A administrator. He might have a tent. Phoebe is based on Andoria. The weather is terrible, but she belongs to Klingons rather than Cardassians. Cardassians find the cruel pleasurable, while Klingons are simply boisterous, loud and crude. The sister might be alive.

Tom might know. He hears the most information. It's possible they travel the same circles. Beverly reminds herself to ask him and connects the detonator.

Bombs are easy. It's the work of an afternoon to kill a handful of people, funny how it is then the work of weeks to nurse one back to health.

It's a harsh plan, but it's a brutal universe. Kathryn, pretty little Doctor Janeway with her unmarred face and innocent eyes, has no idea how bleak things are outside of her lab. If she knew the Alliance, really knew them, she'd slit Ro's throat the next chance she had.

Too bad that's not in the plan. Beverly would enjoy seeing the blood run down Ro's tight black uniform.

She bites the last wire, resorting to stripping the coating with her teeth when her knife is too dull. Spitting polymer into the dust on the floor, Beverly finishes the connection. It's a basic explosive, remote activated, unimpressive yield. A bigger one would cause more death than chaos, and there may be innocents in the market.

Collateral damage is rarely her concern. Innocence is something long gone, that of children who answer questions because they know they're going to get a treat: a little boy who doesn't know to stop talking about warp fields and subspace before the Klingons decide that he might just be worth more than the few strips of latinum it'll cost to clean him up and put him in school. Beverly grabs a rag and wipes away every trace that she was working, letting the motion pull her back to reality.

Wesley is gone. Whatever intelligence his pirate father passed on to him was too much for Beverly to control. She couldn't keep him quiet and he's been gone ten years. The last anyone heard, and Tom's sources are usually the most reliable because no one lies when breathless in bed, Wesley was assigned to special projects, research and development on Quo'Nos itself.

It would be easier if her son was dead. They probably tell him the same lies they tell Kathryn. _Your mother lives a good life because of you. She has a house and a garden._ How old would he be now? Fifteen? Sixteen? Somehow not remembering is easier than knowing how many years it's been since she's held him. He's probably taller than she is.

Beverly drags herself back to the task at hand, memorising what she needs to know. Kathryn's mother is dead, worn out by another pregnancy too close to the sister, killed by the birth of a stillborn boy and a lifetime of going without. That she understands, so she can exploit it. Take care of her, make her feel safe, remind her what it was like to have a mother look after her needs. It's a game, like the ones Chakotay plays to keep Seska amused, or the ones Tom employs to keep himself in Alliance nobles beds.

Like Harry, and his music, she can play this. She can convince Kathryn to trust her, to listen to her and do what they need her to do. They won't hurt her, and she'll be better off with them and their lies than the Alliance and their sadistic cruelty. At least with the resistance, Kathryn will see some of the truth: the price of any bargain with the Alliance, no matter the reward, is suffering greater than anyone can imagine. For every Edward who survives to eek out a living, a hundred Gretchens die from malnutrition. It's a numbers game, and Kathryn's never seen the score. Beverly's not sure if she hates or envies that naivete more.

Beverly tucks the bomb inside her jacket, pulling her scarf tighter around her face. Best not to be seen. Another slave walking through another market for her Alliance masters is invisible.  


* * *

Kathryn walks through the crowd as if she doesn't understand how much she stands out. Her clothing is clean and fits well. Even her Terran badge, marking her as a lesser life form, is clean and neatly pinned to her chest. Everything about her, from her tight bun of auburn hair to her black polished boots, is neat and new. She looks like a newly minted piece of latinum: one that hasn't been nibbled and gnawed as people prove its worth and trade it for scrap.

Taking a last look at that unmarred face, Beverly forces down the pang of guilt as she watches Kathryn's eyes. Losing any kind of virginity stings, and this has the same kind of poetry as the first footprints across a snow-covered field. She's taking something away from this woman, something Beverly lost so long ago that she can't remember the flash of pain. Beverly presses the trigger, and the inferno rises from her bomb to engulf the square. She looks away from the flames, needing her eyes and her ear protection saves her from the blast.

She still feels it, nothing short of a forcefield would have kept that blast from slamming into her chest. She breathes into it, opening her mouth as it hits so she can lose the air in her lungs without bursting them. Even shut, her eyes flash with colour and light. She's rent the square open, brought chaos and death to the market, and it only took a second. It's over before she crushes the detonator under her boot.

Setting it off just as the Alliance guards passed the stall was good timing. Both the Cardassians seem to be dead and the collaborator shopkeeper is spilling her green Orion blood onto the ground next to them. The alarms begin to wail and Beverly has just moments to find Kathryn and steal her away. Kathryn crouches in the corner, eyes wide and white with terror, hands gripping the fragile cover that seems to have protected her. The smell of sulphur and flame covers up the scent of blood, but she'll be wounded, shrapnel should have seen to that. Beverly grabs her. Kathryn's hands dig into her arms like Wesley's did, a lifetime ago when he'd heard the screams across the camp when the Cardassians took someone away.

Terror is a malleable thing. A tool that the Alliance uses to keep down the subjugate species. Even the Romulans fell to them, and yoked with terror, the races who once built great empires are the slaves of this cycle. Who knows how it will be next time around.

Kathryn's ears must be ringing and tears leave pale tracks on her dusty face. She's half-broken by fear and Beverly aches for bringing her to this point. It's not difficult to be kind to her. Beverly forgets what it's like to take away suffering when she spends too much time having to cause it. Her fingers run over Kathryn's injuries, soothing them away. Resistance medicine is crude, they have old tricorders and older laser sutures but somehow it's more intimate. To heal her, Beverly has to touch her, rubbing in the extracts of carefully cultivated roots and herbs.

What is it Tuvok says? _The rendering of pain is a far lesser thing than the rendering of it inert._ Vulcans are soft-hearted poetic bastards and it's no wonder they lost. Terrans are no better. They're a rabble that would just as soon kill themselves for their own advancement. However, most of the time, Vulcans don't kill their own. They're ahead on that account.

Calling her pretty startles poor Kathryn, and her bright blue eyes follow Beverly like a child. Beverly has to smile to hide her own fear.

"Where are we going?"

It's a simple question from the genius. Maybe Beverly overdid the yield on the bomb. They need Kathryn's mind intact.

"We're going to look for a fairy tale."

That answer just brings more confusion to Kathryn's face. Beverly strokes her cheek, calming her.

"Somewhere safe, " she pauses, maybe it's time for a little truth. "Somewhere we might be safe for awhile. Did you know about the caverns under the city?"

Kathryn's eyes widen again.

Beverly reaches for Kathryn's hand, and inclines her head towards the doorway. "Stay with me, don't look up."

Kathryn's fingers tighten hard around her own, and Beverly squeezes back just enough to be comforting. She has overdone it; she thought she might. The poor woman's probably never seen death, or an explosion, and none of her bare skin that Beverly's seen has any scars. She's a demon, taking Kathryn's soul and teaching her the darkness of life. Is it enough if she saves her from death? If this invented bit of suffering keeps millions more safe?

It might be. It is a numbers game, after all.

If Kathryn can help them find the ghost fleet, if they can make even one of those decrepit old ships run, the resistance might have a chance to be more than back alley terrorists and secret-trading concubines, held together by pirates and thugs who've escaped the mines.

Some fairy tales, like freedom, have to be true.

Beverly leads her through a tunnel, passing under the market, where the caverns crawl with insects and nocturnal creatures. She can't even name them, but Beverly meant it when she warned Kathryn not to look up. The scrabbling, crawling darkness on the ceiling is enough to make anyone go mad. They make it out, crawling out into the weak ends of daylight like drowning swimmers finding air. Kathryn's shaking, her adrenaline is starting to wear off, and before she can think her way into doing it, Beverly hugs her.

It would be the right thing to do, if Beverly had done it consciously. Hugging her without thought, holding this body close to her chest without reason is dangerous.

Emotions are unpredictable and that which can't be predicted, can't be contained. Caring is the one thing Beverly doesn't have the strength to do. Vulnerability means death out here, and Beverly still has so much to do.

Yet she's here, holding Kathryn's head against her chest and whispering that she's safe, that she's all right, that somehow the people Beverly's about to deliver her to will protect her. Concubines, musicians, pirates and slaves: they're a motley crew without a hero in the lot.

They needed a genius and they chose Kathryn. Perhaps she would hate them if she knew. Maybe the hand clutching Beverly's arm would slap her. Beverly would almost rather it ended that way. Hatred is easy; it keeps you warm. The other emotions, the ones fighting for dominance in her gut, those are the ones to fear.

Beverly eases Kathryn's head up from her chest, taking her hands and rubbing them between Beverly's own.

"It's all right. I shook like a baby and vomited after my first bomb."

Kathryn doesn't have to know that Beverly's first bomb killed eighteen people, even if they were mostly Cardassians.

"You kept your lunch down," Beverly reminds her. "You're doing far better than I did."

"Thank you." Kathryn licks her lips, trying to clear what must be a dry throat. "I don't know what I would have done..."

And here's the precipice again. The dark, yawning void where Beverly chooses between the truth, and what they need to survive.

"You would have been fine."

The Alliance would have picked her up, reminded her how dangerous and violent her own species is and kept her locked up in safety for the rest of her natural life. Maybe Beverly's lies aren't so terrible. In the end, when this is over, if- when- Kathryn hates her, she'll have a whole universe full of the Alliance on whom to vent her wrath, and a fleet of ghost ships to bear it.

Beverly strokes her hair, tucking a piece of it back, away from Kathryn's face.

"You're stronger than you think."

Kathryn smiles, a flash of honest light in the dimness of half-truths and secrets. "I don't feel like it."

"Sometimes power is like love. You never know what you have until you see what you've done with it."

Now steady, calmed, Kathryn's still within reach, too close to be anything less than intimate. Beverly was keenly aware of that when she talked about love. Mention the word enough, put the thought in the target's head. She can hear Chakotay's voice in her mind, telling her what to say.

Loyalty can be earned, but it's hard to cultivate. Love on the other hand, grows in even the harshest soil.

"Come," Beverly points down a corridor, further into the darkness. "My family will give you somewhere to stay."

"I should go back." Kathryn's protest is genuine, but half-hearted. She hesitates and Beverly fears that she'll stay.

"Through that tunnel, left, right at the next fork, and activate your transponder." Beverly explains it quickly, as if taking too much time would hurt her. "If you hurry, the Intendant will still be looking for you. If you take your time--"

"I'm a traitor."

"Or you're dead."

There were Terrans there, not many, but enough for a molecular scanner to confirm that Kathryn may have died. The Intendant would miss the use of her mind, but she'll replace Kathryn easily enough. If there isn't a scientist waiting, she could always breed one. Terrans reproduce with little difficulty. She'll choose one of her favourites and breed him with a houseslave, maybe even a concubine. Gul Seska, Ro's second, finds Chakotay useful for that often enough.

"The Intendant will think I'm dead?" Kathryn's shock fades and she realises the truth Beverly's been praying for. "My family, they'll be safe if I'm dead. It's not my fault, my contract--"

"Allows that acts of terrorism are not the fault of the Terran, and Alliance obligations will be honoured in that case." One of the only ways out of an Alliance contract is death. It's an odd cultural artefact of the warlike Klingons and the detail-oriented Cardassians.

"You know Terran service contracts?"

Oddly enough, Beverly thought this part would be hard. _Tell her about your son, Chakotay insisted. Empathise, be gentle, connect with her._ She thought she'd have to fake her emotional response, stammer her speech so she sounded upset. She had no idea her throat would actually close.

"My son signed one." Truth hurts most of all, even old ones. "I had to help him read it, because he didn't know all of the words."

Kathryn pales, like she's been hit with another shockwave. Maybe she is about to vomit, after all.

"How old--?"

Beverly's eyes are traitors, filling with stinging tears even though Beverly puts every bit of will she has into forcing them dry.

"He was five."

"Five--"

Beverly turns away, letting her feet carry her back to her resistance cell, the closest thing she has left to family.

Kathryn, of course, follows behind. When she catches up with Beverly, understanding and sympathy written all over her beautiful face, she touches her shoulder.

The connection's forged. All Beverly had to do was blow up Kathryn's world and suck her down into the burning aftermath, like the rest of her species.

 _Kathryn_

Terran instruments were mostly destroyed in the cultural revolution that followed the fall of the Terran Empire. Kathryn's seen a few in the Intendant's collection, including the ones Ro would never admit having if the Listener Empress asked. Kathryn knows enough of double speak to gather from Ro that the Listener Empress is aware of her quiet interest in Terran art and music but allows it because Ro is a brutal and efficient Intendant. If Ro falters, her pithy curiosity in the culture of her slaves will be her undoing with the military beneath her command and the threat of that shared knowledge helps keep Ro in line. Knowledge is greater than latinum or Tholian silk.

All Kathryn can remember is that a violin faintly resembles a Bajoran qeora, and a trumpet shines like a clean piece of gold conduit.

Her ears are still buzzing in protest of their abuse, but there's music. Someone in Beverly's camp plays music and the thought stops her feet.

She's heard the Imperial Bajoran Symphony and the Cardassian Philharmonic when they toured through Terok Sa, the Intendant's station. Both imperial orchestras were impressive in their own manner. Bajoran music is full of complex melodies and impossible harmonies. It's measured and intricately constructed. Cardassian music is often atonal: sometimes violent, sometimes wailing.

The Intendant explained that Cardassian hearing relies more on changes in pitch to determine beauty, while Bajoran hearing is more like her own, only superior. Terrans are the weakest of the sentient races, that's why they fell. They interbreed easily with the others, because their weak DNA is recessive and overcome by any race of the Alliance. Terrans have minimal redundant organs, carry their children four months longer than Bajorans, and can only tolerate a minimal level of heat.

Terrans once had music of their own, but it is nothing more than wind howling though dust now. Even through the dull ache from the long gash on her leg, Kathryn eventually recognises a Vulcan tune. The metre is too regular for it to be anything else.

"How do you have music?"

Her rescuer smiles. "Harry has to practice."

Kathryn files away the thought that Harry is a musician and remembers she never asked the name of her rescuer. She grabs the dirty sleeve of the woman who saved her and studies her face. There's too many years of worry etched around large blue eyes and aristocratic cheekbones. If she wasn't filthy, she'd be beautiful.

"Who are you?"

Her rescuer covers Kathryn's hand with her own and squeezes it warmly. "You're bleeding again."

New red blood seeps through the bandage on Kathryn's thigh, bright through the dirt.

"Oh, I didn't--"

"Come, sit, let me fix it before you pass out."

Her rescuer drags her around the last corner into a large cave. Cloth tents line the wall on the left and a fire burns in the centre of the room, smoke rising into a ramshackle atmospheric recycler.

Kathryn lets her rescuer guide her down, holding her arms. "You live here?"

There's no real light, only glow panels stuffed in the ceiling where there was space. It's haphazard, some green, some white, and a few pulsing lazily. Her rescuer knows the room and settles her on a clean slab of stone, just beneath one of the stronger white lights.

"Beats ore processing." There's mirth in her rescuer's dark smile.

Kathryn's seen the ore processing centres and the horrible conditions the Terran slaves worked under there. She can't imagine this woman there, this angel with an antique medical kit, but perhaps that is where her scars had come from. The double lines on her left cheek and the mark along her jaw had come from somewhere.

"This won't heal like it would in an Alliance medical centre, it will sting, then itch while it heals. You'll get used to the smell." Her rescuer peels back the bandage and rubs in more of the odd pungent salve, something herbal and sharp, like lemon peel.

Kathryn forces her hands to relax and releases her rescuer's sleeve. "It's nice."

"Give it time and it'll be all right. Don't push it. No dancing for the Intendant for a few days."

Another salve, this one white and soft slide over the burns on Kathryn's arm. Quick and efficient, everywhere her fingers touch goes cool.

"There you go." The woman takes a cloth and rubs ash from Kathryn's face."Good as new."

"Who are you?"

"No one of importance."

"But you must--" Kathryn coughs, her lungs protesting their abuse.

"Drink." The woman presses a cup into her hand. Behind her, figures emerge from the tents or Kathryn first notices them, she can't be sure.

Gulping the weak juice that tastes faintly of coconut, Kathryn stares at her rescuer as the others close in. "Do you have a name?"

"Slaves don't need names. Didn't they teach you that in the Intendant's bedchamber?"

Kathryn blushes. "No, I don't--"

"You're not part of the harem, right, right. I forgot. You're just her little pet scientist."

Kathryn tries her leg, which is numb instead of throbbing. "No. You don't understand."

"It's all right." The woman waves her quiet. "We've all done things we're not proud of to keep out of the Alliance's way." Darkness passes through her eyes and her story fades back into memory, whatever it was.

She sighs. Relenting, she offers her name. "Beverly."

"That's pretty."

"Sure beats Terran five-five-two-Beta-Charlie." Beverly chirps, showing the tattooed mark on her neck when she lifts her hair. "Nothing like Doctor Janeway though."

Kathryn winces again, her privilege settling in to weigh on her shoulders.

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Frown." Beverly taps Kathryn's forehead. "You'll ruin your pretty face."

Behind Beverly, a young man with an instrument Kathryn doesn't recognise, sneaks up carrying a grin as wide as his face. He's slight, with long black hair and golden skin. He has none of the scars Beverly does, so he may have escaped the mines.

"Found a stray?" His voice is light. He can't be more than fifteen.

"Harry, this is Doctor Kathryn Janeway."

Kathryn extends her hand and he switches his instrument to his left to shake hers. He grins at the gesture, even though he knows the custom it seems quaint to him.

A young man with sandy hair and an all-too-charming smile wraps one arm around Harry's shoulders and nods to her. There's an intensity in his gaze that she's seen before. The kind of gaze that promises to know everything about her. He is more cocky than Will; more outwardly confident. He offers his hand, taking hers and stroking the back of it with his thumb. Tingles chase each other up the back of her neck.

"I'm Tom."

Beverly taps his shoulder, ending their contact. Kathryn steps back, nearly stepping on Beverly's foot. When did she get so close?

"She's not for you, Tommy." Beverly's tone is light, but there's just enough weight to make Kathryn wonder just who she is for.

She was a gift for the last Intendant: a pretty little captive genius, who could prove the distance formula by age twelve and would rather do calculus and astrophysics than sleep. Kathryn had been one of the few Terran children who survived her upbringing and reached her potential. When she was granted her doctorate, her father earned a promotion and Phoebe moved to Andor. She's seen the letters they're allowed to write each year and they're not addressed to her. Kathryn Janeway isn't a person, she's the property of Intendant Ro.

She touches the tattooed ownership mark on the side of her neck. It can't itch, it's long healed, but she's aware of it as if it were raw.

Tom leans in. He's barely a few years older than Harry, but there's more experience in his eyes. He smiles like Will.

Beverly waves them off. "You two can talk to her later, let me get her cleaned up."

Tom lifts a strand of her hair, sniffing it. "She stinks of Alliance."

Harry watches, reaching for her hair then pulling back his hand. "How can the Alliance have a smell?"

"A Klingon ship smells of leather, old blood and sword oil. You smell sweat and fresh meat. Cardassian ships reek of kanar but the air is dry, like the empty desert. Reptiles rely on heat, not smell. They're not salty with sweat like mammals. A Bajoran ship will have incense, sometimes thick enough to cover everything else, and a Ferengi vessel, that could smell like whatever the Damon desires. If you know the difference, you'll know where you are without even having to open your eyes."

The speaker circles from behind her, his voice like silver scraping stone. Beverly's breast is just behind Kathryn's back, and she can feel it soft against her before Beverly's hand cups her shoulder.

"Knowing that could keep you alive. Beverly, take care of her."

Turning to see the speaker, Kathryn's too slow and only catches a glimpse of him. He's Terran, tall and solid with steel and black hair. There's something on his face, across his forehead towards his temple. It's a tattoo, but nothing like the ownership tattoos the Alliance put on their slaves. It's not Klingon or Cardassian, or even Andorian. Could it be Terran? Do Terrans even have traditions of their own anymore? Why does he look so familiar?

Harry watches the man for a moment before he drops his eyes. "He's our leader."

"Such as we have," Tom says, shrugging. "Might tell you his name if he thinks it's important."

"I thought names weren't important in your work." Harry nudges Tom's shoulder, grinning. His smile makes him look even younger, like one of the children the Intendant collects.

"Need anything?" Tom smiles lazily at Beverly, ignoring Harry's jibe.

"We're fine, thanks."

"What did he mean, take care of me?" Kathryn asked, burying the cold knot in her stomach.

"Keep you out of the tunnels with the bugs, keep you from getting yourself killed by being where you shouldn't be."

Turning her head back towards the direction of the leader's disappearance, Kathryn looks back to Beverly. "I'm not a child."

"You are out here." Beverly reaches for her cheek, but Kathryn pulls back. "How old were you when the Alliance took you? Seven? Thenall you know of the real universe is what the Alliance wants you to see.."

"I--" What comeback could she have? Kathryn only leaves the station with the Intendant or to get supplies. She's always with an escort, never alone. On the surface on her own she'd head for the first Alliance guard she saw and hope to go home. If she wasn't already a traitor or dead.

"I don't want you to feel you have to, I'm not looking for--"

Beverly catches her cheek this time, caressing Kathryn's skin like the mother she's long forgotten. "It's all right. I know it's probably the only thing the Alliance didn't drill into your head, but you can trust me."

Her hand drops and the moment's broken. Kathryn reaches up and touches where Beverly's hand was a moment ago.

"Come on," Beverly says. "Let's find you a place to sleep."


	2. Chapter 2

_Laren_

"The Listener is on her way." Deanna Troi, Sector Inquisitor, leans back against the console, resting one booted foot against the wall. Her dark curly hair runs down her shoulders like ivy. "Why would she care about a missing Terran? This Janeway can't be that important."

Intendant Ro Laren paces in front of her in the console, ignoring the heavy sounds of her own feet against the deck. "She's probably dead. The investigators found her DNA at the scene, plenty of blood. It's an unlucky bombing, we'll get a new scientist. That boy-"

"Wesley Howard."

"He's promising, isn't he?" Laren tugs at the neck of her uniform. It hugs her skin, like all Intendant's uniforms, but by the end of the day, it itches. She's often jealous of Deanna, whose short skirt leaves her legs free.

"He's much younger. Even if he is a genius, he hasn't spent the time on halo objects your pet did." Deanna's tone goes bitter. She's made no secret of her dislike of the Terran and her smile when Kathryn's death was reported is still fresh in Laren's mind. Deanna's rather beautiful when she's jealous.

"How many times do I have to remind you, nothing happened? Janeway was never my type."

Deanna toys with her dagger, flicking it through her fingers. "Good."

Laren glances to her personal guard and dismisses them with her eyes. She reaches around, tugging down the zipper of her uniform. Deanna slips the dagger between Laren's fingers, catching the zipper with the blunt side of the blade and peeling it down with the knife.

Cold metal runs up Laren's back, and Deanna's voice is a purr. "The Listener just wants to check Wesley, hear what he has in his mind."

"Is she bringing _her_?" Laren only has to stress the word for Deanna to hear who she means.

"The High Inquisitor? Most likely. It's the easiest way to search for traitors." Deanna follows the trail left by her knife with her warm fingertips. "If someone set up the kidnapping of the Terran, it would have to be someone who knew where she was."

Laren turns around, removing her arms from her uniform as Deanna watches. Deanna's black eyes hold a reflection of Laren's bare skin as she shrugs free.

"I've only met the High Inquisitor once." Laren slides her uniform down her hips. One of her slaves, a dark-skinned Vulcan, brings her robe and takes the uniform away. "I heard her in my mind for weeks afterwards."

"Intendants hold power, the Listener likes to be sure of who she gives it to." Deanna wanders to the bed, letting her heels click on the floor. She can walk as silent as the dusk, but she knows what the sound does to Laren.

Laren shakes her head and steps out of the last of her uniform. "The Listener Empress, here, on my station."

"Listener sound so much less threatening, doesn't it?"

"The threats veiled in silk are more dangerous than those wearing armour."

"Someone's been reading the proverbs again." Deanna perches on the end of the bed, legs crossed. "Such a scholar."

Laren rests her hands on the bed on either side of Deanna. "The Pah-Wraiths have kept Bajor safe for thousands of years."

"The Pah-Wraiths let the Terran Empire conquer your planet."

"The conquering made us strong." Laren says. "We threw them off."

"It doesn't take a strong beast to throw off a rotting corpse." Deanna's hands toy with the belt the Vulcan slave just knotted around Laren's waist. "The Terran Empire was corrupt, fading into obscurity long before the Alliance rose to power. Terrans are not meant to rule, they lack ambition. They make good pets, like your scientists, because they can learn. They're curious, clever things, but they live to serve. You can't trust a Terran to be in charge of anything. They need to be told what to do."

Laren strokes her hair. Deanna's right. "Like your father?"

Deanna smirks, pursing deep red lips. "My father is my mother's chief concubine. Strong enough to occasionally block her thoughts. Before she found my father made a suitable mate, she had to kill my half-sister when she went mad. It wasn't until I was four that she decided she would not have to do the same to me."

Laren's read the Alliance reports on Betazed. Though they can be powerful weapons, full blood Betazoids are rarely sane, only the strongest can hold their minds together against the onslaught of emotion in the universe. Deanna's calm comes from a dilution of her mother's Betazoid DNA with that of a Terran. The High Inquisitor did what she had to do when she bore the child of a slave.

"Betazoid abilities are unpredictable," Deanna explains. "Two of the strongest telepaths can beget a weakling mind and taking Terran mate breeds an Inquisitor. Sometimes slaves have their uses."

"Have you met him?"

Deanna laughs, pulling open Laren's robe. "Of course. My mother was kind enough to let him care for me as a reward for his service. He serves her still."

Laren's own parents, now retired, live as aristocrats on Bajor. They live well but their lives are far from important and the Alliance honours them for her accomplishments instead of their own. She files away her curiosity about Deanna's father, her terror of her mother and the Empress' visit for another day. Wesley will just have to finish what Kathryn started.  


* * *

 _Tuvok_

Information passing is a business of shadows. Tuvok leans against the wall, letting the shadow envelop him. Tom passes, dressed brightly in blue and orange. He walks the market with a concubine's freedom. The Alliance guards see him but ignore his path. A concubine lives in shadow.

Tom stops to brush dirt from his boot beneath an archway and close to the darkness.

Tuvok crouches beside him. "The Listener is coming."

Only practice keeps Tom's face still. His emotional control is strong for a Terran. "Is she?"

"The Intendant has replaced Janeway with a boy."

Tom spits on his boot and polishes it with a rag. "A boy?"

"Wesley Howard."

"That's not good."

"It is an unfortunate occurrence."

"He's barely as old as Harry, how can he take over for Janeway?"

A guard passes and Tom smiles up at her while Tuvok fades into the shadow.

"Can't show up with dirty boots, can I?" Tom feigns innocence and the Klingon passes him by.

Tom waits until Tuvok appears again, eyes still on his boot and the imagined scuff mark. "Wesley Howard and the Listener Empress. Hope Chakotay knows what he's doing."

"Indeed."

Tom starts to stand, taking a moment to stare into the darkness and Tuvok. "Be careful."

"I will remain cautious."

Tom disappears, heading for the landing pad. Tuvok fades back into the darkness and follows it back to Intendant Ro's quarters. She will, as always, not have missed him while she was distracted by Inquisitor Troi.   


* * *

 

 _Beverly_

"This console is an antique!" Kathryn's so surprised her eyes are wide. "I didn't know any of these were still in existence." She runs her hands over it, paying little attention to the dust. "Does it still work?"

"Of course it works." Beverly leans underneath it, wiggles the spanner holding the power supply in place and the console flickers to life. It hums, unlike the silent consoles Kathryn must be accustomed to working with because her eyebrows are up.

"How old is this, fifty years?"

Chakotay told her, but Beverly can't remember and shrugs. "Possibly. Tuvok would know."

"Tuvok?"

"One of our operatives. He was a scientist in the Terran Empire, just prior to the fall."

"Really?" Kathryn uses her sleeve to wipe dust away from her display. "I suppose it's possible. Vulcans lifespans are so much longer than ours, but I-- I can't imagine living under the Terran Empire."

"I bet it's much like this. Some rare good in a whole universe of darkness, we're just on the other side of the mess." If the Terrans were still in charge, Wesley would be with her, but Beverly doesn't mention him. Chakotay insists she should keep talking about him, keep him in Kathryn's mind to earn her sympathy. He doesn't tell Beverly what to do with the hole in her heart Wesley's left that's been festering for a decade.

Maybe that's part of his plan. If she falls into the black pit of emotion that surrounds her son, Kathryn will--

Beverly shakes that thought away. She has a mission.

"Tell me about your work."

Kathryn reappears from under the display, dust on her face. "Do you know anything about massive compact halo objects?"

"I know massive, compact, halo and object, but not in that order." Beverly hands Kathryn a fresh rag to clean something from the inside of the console. "When the automated cleaning systems go, it's really a mess, isn't it?"

"I had no idea." Kathryn pulls an isolinear rod and checks it before replacing it. "Massive compact halo objects are bodies of baryonic matter. They emit no light and drift through interstellar space without being part of a solar system. They're nearly impossible to detect and have very large masses--"

"Massive."

"Yes." Kathryn smiles a little. "Massive is well applied. Sometimes they're dead dwarf stars, or neutron stars, or black holes. Think of it like invisible lumps of gravity, floating through space."

"The Intendant has an entire lab so you can study invisible lumps of gravity?"

Kathryn catches herself. "Not a whole lab. There are other projects. M.C.H.O.s are of interest now. That's why the previous Intendant assigned them to me."

"You knew the previous Intendant?" Curious, Beverly helps wipe down the rest of the dusty isolinear rods. The console was in pretty good shape a few days ago, before Chakotay set Tom and Harry to work making it dusty. The boys may have been overzealous.

"The last three. Intendant Miral began my studies, and I only knew her a little. I was very young when she was promoted to the Romulan sector. Apparently she had a knack for dealing with slaves."

"That's what the Alliance might call it." Beverly touches Kathryn's shoulder, wishing she could do something to soften the shock. "Intendant Miral's 'knack' involves shock troops and painsticks."

Kathryn blinks but takes it in. She's getting harder. "Intendant Gurkon was killed very quickly. Intendant Rhyssian lasted longer, but she failed the Empress and was replaced with Intendant Ro, who's been very interested in M.C.H.O.s for the last few years. I've spent nearly all my time on them."

"I don't suppose you've seen the Empress?" The back of Beverly's neck crawls, as if beetles were running down it.

The Listener Empress is half-myth and half-demon. She's rumoured to be centuries old, functionally immortal. One of the few remaining of a decimated race, though one legend says she killed most of her own before rising to power after the end of the Terran rebellion. She's the stuff of nightmares, a witch of unknown powers, ruling the galaxy from a great black ship, _Silence_.

The old Terran Emperors were famous for their excess, their vessels: _The Emperor's Wrath_ , _The Indominable_ , _Warhammer_ , and _Enterprise_ are all names that live in infamy. _Silence_ is quiet and subtle. When Beverly was a little girl, she thought silence was what took the weak and helpless, taking them to the blackness of death. Now she knows those legends reek of truth.

"I had to be tested by the High Inquisitor, that was on the Empress' vessel at the time, but no, I didn't see the Empress. Are you looking for ghost stories?"

Kathryn's face has none of the fear that has wound its way into Beverly's gut. Why would it? She's a good citizen of the Alliance. She's not a rebel who foils the Alliance's will every chance she gets. Beverly takes a slow sip of water from the canteen, calming her racing heart. The Empress is far from here. Intendant Ro's sector is far from important, out on the fringes of space. There's nothing out past here but dead stars and gravitational anomalies.

"What was she like? The High Inquisitor?"

"I was very young." Kathryn's spanner hums as she tightens seals on the console. "Eight, or nine. The Empress wanted all the new Terrans tested. Too many traitors sneaking in. Too many deaths. The High Inquisitor sat in a throne in the middle of the room, all black and crystal. She had very dark eyes, blacker than I thought black could be, and she looked through me. I thought it would take a long time, or maybe that I'd have to go through one of those neuroscanners the Cardassians use."

Beverly tightens her grip on the edge of the console, fighting nausea. Cardassian neural imagers, _etchers_ , forcibly transcribe the neural pathways of the victim, stimulating each memory and every nerve. A favoured slave like Kathryn would be sedated and remember none of it, but anyone else would relieve each of their memories in violent detail, while every nerve in their body screamed in agony. If the subject survives the process, their nerves are forever altered; their senses scorched and tattered. Chakotay told her once that he doesn't feel heat or cold, only a tingling numbness.

Jack wasn't there when they finished with him. If Jean-Luc hadn't put him out of his misery, he would have spent the rest of his life a husk of what was once a man.

"Are you all right?"

She must have been quiet too long. Kathryn is next to her, her soft hand on Beverly's knee.

"What is it?"

"Cardassian mental scanners can be very dangerous."

Kathryn tilts her head, puzzled. "Only if they're used on a conscious mind."

She's never seen so she doesn't know. If Beverly had gods, she'd rage at them for letting her keep the memory of Jack's empty eyes, the shaking of his limbs, and the slow trickle of blood on the side of his head.

"They're used as a tool." Beverly fills her lungs, heart racing again. "An interrogation tool for the very stubborn prisoners."

"No." It's a soft denial, one more out of habit than truth. "They wouldn't. How could anyone possibly answer questions with their neural pathways being mapped at the same time?"

Beverly drops her head between her knees, listening to the rushing of blood in her ears and wishing she didn't remember the gulping screams that had no awareness left. Before he was gone, Jack was the animal the Alliance purport all Terrans to be.

"Sometimes interrogation isn't about answering questions."

Kathryn takes that without argument. "Who?"

"A man I knew. A pirate, but he had moments of decency. He helped me out of a pretty bad place."

"Before Chakotay? Where did you come from? One of the colony worlds? The Klingon sector? I know life can be hard there."

Beverly shuts her eyes. There were so many before Chakotay. Faces run together with dusty hideouts, ships held together by welds and a prayer and all the running.

"I grew up on Arvada III, after the plague I moved with my grandmother between refugee camps. When she argued too many times with a Cardassian, she was shot, and then I was alone. I knew enough to make myself useful. My grandmother was a healer once." Beverly opens her eyes and stares down at the dirt between her feet. She leaves out the bombs her grandmother taught her to build, or that the argument with the Cardassian was over a detonator coil.

"I was taken to the Andorian Sector, but my transport was raided by pirates. They needed a medic so I went with them. They were the first free Terrans I'd ever seen. Terrans who chose their own course; decided their own destiny. I had a few years there, the captain was gruff but kind in his way, and we eked out a living. I'd never had anything like that before. We ate what we wanted, went where we wished. We saw Andor and the old Terran colonies, Romulus and the gardens of the old court."

Kathryn takes the hand Beverly's wrapped too tightly around her knee and holds it between her own. "I've always wanted to see Romulus."

"It was good for a few years. Then we were caught, by coincidence more than any skill of the Alliance. They put Jack was in the etcher, the Cardassian neuroscanner, and then it was over." She still doesn't know how the captain walked away from his session. There was a darkness in his eyes, a hint of danger that Beverly's never understood. The captain sat up in the middle of his treatment and strangled the Cardassian with his hands. She went with him, walked away from the husk that had been Jack, and when Wesley grew in her belly, she never asked herself who the father was, the dead man or the man who didn't die.

"I met Chakotay later, after the Alliance took my son."

Kathryn blinks away tears, too gentle for her own good. "I'm sorry about Jack."

"He deserved a better death. You should have had his pancakes." Beverly forces her smile to keep her eyes dry. She won't feel anything. She can't. "I'll make them for you sometime. You should know more Terran food."

She stands and offers Kathryn a hand up. There's that blank look again. "You have heard of pancakes?"

Kathryn shakes her head, apologetic. "No. The Intendant preferred Bajoran food. Terok Sa has a few restaurants, but they're all Klingon and Cardassian, maybe some Bolian, nothing Terran."

"Pancakes are one of the few good reasons to be awake in the morning." Beverly rubs the side of her face, feigning dirt to catch the tear. "You'll like them. They're sweet."

"Bajorans don't have many sweets."

"Terrans do."

Kathryn smiles over the control panel, wriggling part of it until it settles into a glow. "Maybe I'll like them."

"Of course you will."

Beverly stands behind her, looking over her shoulder as Kathryn begins attuning the long range sensors Chakotay 'borrowed' from the Alliance. The equations fly across the screen. Astrophysics is far beyond anything Beverly's ever tried to understand, but Kathryn's happy to explain, in great detail just what the Intendant's been having her do for the last few years.

Chakotay was right. Dark matter, halos of dark energy on the far edges of known space: Kathryn's research is all what he thought it was. Four centuries ago, the great fleet of JthellnRuk, nearly half of the El Aurian armada, disappeared fighting someone more powerful. The other race, whoever they were, wiped out the rest, but suffered enough losses to retreat to the Delta Quadrant to wait, like a turvof spider in the darkness. The Terran Empire rose in their place then fell to the Listener Empress and the Alliance.

Now Terrans are nothing, petty criminals and terrorists without starships. Anything the Terrans do, any hope of organising a real rebellion rests on starships. Starships are something they cannot build or steal without the Alliance knowing, but a lost fleet might just escape notice long enough to matter.

Intendant Ro might have been plotting her own rise to power, but a Terran rebellion with the JthellnRuk fleet might shake the galaxy through to the core. Kathryn Janeway, Ro's pet scientist, might just be the one to give it to them.   


* * *

 

 _B'Elanna_

Intendant Miral feels no fear. Fear is for lesser beings, like her half-Terran daughter. B'Elanna's grown up hearing every insult her mother's troops have to throw at her, Klingon and Cardassian alike. Terrans are weak; they are the conquered. They're no better than naked Targs and no good for eating. Terrans are meant to clean the floors, wipe blood from armour and shine bat'leths. Terrans should never share the bedchamber of Intendants, unless they are playlings.

B'Elanna has heard she should have been killed at birth for being less than Klingon or been washed from her mother's belly before her heart beat. She's heard all the whistling and hooting of her mother's troops. She's heard, but it means nothing. A real warrior fights in her heart, not with her ears. A real warrior fights with her mind; her body is as much of a tool as the bat'leth she holds. She lives because she is the equal of a Klingon. Her Terran DNA has saved her twice from poison, and her immune system is far superior. These are little things, invisible things that make her strong.

She need not fear as she follows her mother onto the great black ship. _Silence_ , the flagship of the Alliance, is passing through Miral's sector on the way to Ro's. Their destination is on the far fringe of the galaxy, further than B'Elanna has ever been with her mother. She rubs out a mark on the metal of her armour. She has to make a good impression so she can travel with the Listener Empress. She can learn no more from her mother, and there is no room for ambition in Miral's court. Her Inquisitor is too watchful, her security too tight: B'Elanna needs to be out of Miral's shadow.

Miral agrees. She's arranged an audience with the Empress to personally ask the favour. B'Elanna knows Miral's concerned less for her well-being and more for deterring an impatient and competent heir, but she appreciates that their needs are aligned. Intendant is a tenuous position at best, one approached with caution because the risk of death usually far outweighs the substantial gain of the position. Intendants live in constant danger, beset by friends and enemies alike.

B'Elanna has already conquered her fear and her anger. The former has been banished and the latter burns in her breast like a disruptor blast. She is better than the guards who hiss when her back is turned. She will be Intendant, and she will show them how power is to be wielded. Intendant Koloth is old and fat. Intendant Dukat commands a sector of Klingons, and will surely fail. The way is open and she will seize it.

The airlock door slides open with a deep hiss before them. No one transports onto the Empress's ship, all walk aboard. The corridor stretches out in front of them, smooth and black. The lights in the wall lead inward, towards the heart of darkness.

Miral dismisses her personal guard. The Ferengi slaves of the _Silence_ watch them both remove their weapons. Knives, daggers, bat'leths, disruptors: all must be left on Miral's station. None but the Empress's guards are permitted to hold a weapon on her vessel. Removing all the hidden weapons from their armour takes time, and Miral hisses the slaves back when their hands get too close to her.

B'Elanna's too fascinated by what she can see past the slaves to care much about what she has to take off to get there. _Silence_ has a transwarp drive, the only one in use in all of the Alliance. Some rumours suggest it's stolen technology, some say it's so ancient that no one knows how it works anymore, but the idea of it fascinates her more than the sheer power of the bank of disruptors on the ship, or the torpedoes she carries. It is not Klingon to lust after technology that isn't offensive tech. She could claim it is the tactical advantage but in truth, she's curious.

She's already taken apart most of her mother's station and the starships at her mother's control. She almost envies the Terran slaves because they have the time to do what she cannot, to learn and study. A Klingon mind would be wasted on learning. Klingons have no scientists because there is no honour is discovery, only combat. B'Elanna could keep fighting, even though most warriors are larger and stronger than she. She could learn to fly starships in battle or develop her skill with the disruptors, but combat bores her.

It's too crude. Even starship combat can end up being a contest between who has the bigger ship, the better weapons, just like who has the sharper bat'leth. Klingon ships are bulky and overpowered. Cardassian ships have weak engines and pathetic shielding. Listener ships, the ancient ones, are still full of secrets, and only the Empress has access to them.

She's read everything she could find in the databases: some files so old that she found them in the library of legends, buried in songs and chants. While Kahless was fighting his way down the River of Blood, while the Cardassians stabbed each other in the back for latinum and jewels, while the Terrans built temples and worshipped the old gods, the Listeners had starships.

If the Listener fleet had arrived in whole from the other side of the galaxy, no Terran empire could have grown fat and bloated under its own weight; no Alliance would have rose to stop them and there would have only been peace. The Listeners' peace, with order and right, more importantly to B'Elanna, transwarp drive.

They walk down the endless hall, moving steadily towards the light in the heart of the ship. The only schematic B'Elanna could find, something she had to use her mother's stolen clearance codes to access, told her that the bridge is at the heart of a Listener ship. The Empress's chambers surround the transwarp core, which runs at the heart of the vessel. The Empress sleeps with the transwarp core pulsing above her bed.

It must be beautiful.

B'Elanna plays her part, following her mother obediently with a Klingon's proud surly look. She can't admit she belongs here, on this wondrous vessel, without her mother growing suspicious. Better to play the grumpy child, exiled to a place without battle and honour, than let her mother know how she truly feels.

She has Will Riker to thank for that. He understands how her mother's mind works, what to say to avoid her anger, and how to play the good little Klingon when the time calls for it.

Terrans are a clever people, even their pretty courtesans. She had Will as a gift, something to take her mind off her Klingon hormones and their screaming desire to mate. He was older than her, but kind, and rough enough to leave her sated. She didn't trust him the first time he came to her bed, and it took a year for her to realise that she could learn from him, just as she learned from her books. He knew how to read people the way she listens to a warp core.

She's only had Klingon lovers since. None of them have been smart, but some have been kind. There was one gunner, a tall, curvy female who makes her smile. B'Elanna was able to transfer her into her personal guard without her mother noticing. K'Ehleyr will serve her well and she suspects she will appreciate the change in scenery as much as B'Elanna does.

They turn corner after corner, finally stopping in front of the great black door marked with the seal of the Empress.

One of the Ferengi escorting them looks at her mother's boots and whispers. "She is here."

The terror in his voice makes it a death rattle. He risked his life in the warning.

Miral stiffens, baring her teeth in crude thanks.

B'Elanna performs her preparations inside her own mind. She is no threat to the Empress, she wants to serve. More importantly, she wants to serve here, with this technology, and the High Inquisitor should find no fault with that.

Will promised she wouldn't and he knows Betazoids. He's one of the few people B'Elanna has ever heard use their proper names. The Klingons call them the black-eyed demons, the Cardassians hiss about them in whispers and Terrans flee the sight of them.

Betazoids are the creeping menace that haunts the dreams of any member of the Alliance who has ever dared to think ill of the Empress. Betazoids are a terrifying race, half-mad telepaths who can hear thoughts and emotions of others, even influence them to their benefit. Few reach puberty with their minds intact and even fewer leave their planetary quarantine zone.

He claimed to know two, and to have stood in the presence of the High Inquisitor and lived. Betazoids value honesty, above all else, he warned. Be honest with her, more honest than B'Elanna's ever been for all her life, and she'll leave with her mind intact.

B'Elanna clears her mind, trying to compartmentalise her ambition and desire. She wants what only the Empress can give her, and she'll trade her life's blood to get it.

The door slides open as silent as the way into a tomb. Now, unlike her mother, B'Elanna feels no fear.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chakotay_

He has a long way to go tonight. Chakotay lets the others drink the wine and talk around the fire. Kathryn's getting close, she sits with her hand on Beverly's knee and she's never left her side. She sees the way Beverly looks at Harry, how the sorrow runs deep in her eyes when she thinks of her son. Wesley is their enemy now, the mind racing against Kathryn's to find the lost fleet.

Beverly doesn't know and he hopes she never does. It may be unavoidable, but her part has always been the most difficult one. He takes some solace in the way she smiles at Kathryn. Perhaps there will be peace in that for her, spirits know she deserves some, especially after what he's about to do.

He waits up, watching the fire until all of his little family is in their tents. It's rough sleeping, but the ground has been worked over enough to be soft. Sleeping anywhere free beats a bunk on an Alliance cruiser. He pretends not to notice Kathryn stand on her tiptoes to kiss Beverly against the wall of the cave. He listens to Tom and Harry joke about when he'll be ready to take his first patron. He remembers his own nerves and the twirling sensation in his stomach when he realised there was more to his life than the giving and receiving of pain. There was also pleasure, stolen moments at first, but slowly, he learned to control it.

After Seska, he controls everything. He could blame the etcher for rewriting his mind, but the change is more fundamental than that. He was angry once, a man of fire and hatred. Now he's cold, as hard to his purpose as clay from a kiln. Seska wanted to break him. When he closes his eyes, he can see her leering and her need to dominate him. He's spent a life managing needs. The needs of his group in the dusty desert he was born in, the needs of his patrons and finally the need to survive. Survival is not an elegant thing. He couldn't bargain or pray for it, but he can fight for it tooth and claw.

Chakotay pokes at the fire and acknowledges his spirit guide. The legends of his people have been twisted and retold, but he's certain that few of them have ever had two spirit guides. One is enough for most people. Only in great need is there another. He had one guide, a thoughtful, steering spirit. Then there was Seska and the etcher and his new guide is darkness, claws and fangs.

She suits him because she's heartless, just like he has to be.

Kathryn doesn't know it yet, but she found the answer: a slight variation in a theorem, long forgotten, mostly overlooked. She's too academic to know what she has but that's to their advantage. Chakotay can't test it yet, he needs a ship, a distraction, something to keep the Empress busy long enough for him to begin unravelling her world.

He stamps out the fire and heads for the surface. His distraction is planned and like water racing over stones, it's already on course. If he believed in forgiveness, he'd ask for it, but it's not that kind of universe. Maybe it never has been.

The night air is cool, much more to his liking than the arid days on this rock. He walks past the landmark, a shack with a streak of red on the wall, and then circles around again. He bends to pick up a piece of scrap conduit, as if checking to see if he could use it, before he ducks inside.

Riker leans against the wall, dressed in black. Tuvok stands beside him. If the Intendant knew they were together, all of them would be etched until their ears bled and their skins hung on the Intendant's wall, and that's only if the Inquisitors didn't get them first.

"The Empress is on her way." For some reason, Riker's always smiling. Chakotay often wonders if he broke that way when the Betazoids trained him.

"We will require the carrier frequency and control schematics for the JthellnRuk vessels." Tuvok carriers a fresh green bruise under his eye. Inquisitor Troi must have been in a foul mood when she heard her mother was coming.

Chakotay nods. "We'll get it."

Riker picks imaginary lint from his sleeve. "You'll need to be on her ship."

"We can do that."

"Sending someone into the lioness's den?"

"I must caution you," Tuvok interjects before Chakotay can answer. "I believe the stories of the High Inquisitor are not to be taken lightly."

"You man she really is a demon?"

"If such creatures were to exist, it is probable that they would resemble the High Inquisitor in nature, if not in form. If the rumours of what has been found on Betazed is true, there may be grave danger in being in the same sector as the High Inquisitor, let alone on the same ship."

Vulcan fatalism, nothing else like it. Chakotay straightens. "I have a plan for her. Something to keep her out of my head."

"I can think of no such device."

"I might just have something. A old trick Picard found in a tomb."

Will grins, the heartless sort of smile with too many teeth. "Oh, this'll be fun."   


* * *

_Kathryn_

She had never initiated a kiss. Never the first one, maybe one or two as part of a series, but never the first. Kathryn's had a great many firsts lately. She presses Beverly back against the smooth stone wall of the cave, relishing the way her body fits pliantly against her own. Her sexual encounters have been brief, businesslike. Intendant Ro liked to know her scientists were happy and saw to their needs.

She once asked Kathryn if she preferred males or females and at twenty-two, staring down at an ambitious young Intendant of seventeen, Kathryn hadn't known what to say. Ro had taken special interest in her then, the scientist who worked too hard for sex. Ro gave her Will, a favourite of hers. The next time Kathryn pleased her, she was rewarded with a dark man bearing something on his forehead Kathryn is just starting to remember seeing again more recently. There was Mark and Justin, both slaves, one kind, one cold.

Deanna Troi had her once, taking her in the Intendant's room while Ro was busy conquering her sector. Though the fingers of Deanna's mind ran over the darkest spaces of Kathryn's psyche, she didn't fear her. Deanna can be vicious and cruel. Kathryn's heard, but never wanted to believe what she can do. When she thinks of the Inquisitor, she remembers the power of being up against the wall.

She never thought she'd have that power, yet here she is, wrapped around a Terran rebel. Kathryn slips her tongue between Beverly's eager lips, tasting promise and crudely made wine. Tom and Harry might still be awake enough to see them, and Chakotay could probably see them if he looks, but it doesn't matter.

This matters. Beverly does. Kathryn wants Beverly, the way she thinks Deanna wanted her. Will, Mark, Justin, the man she can't remember- all of them were polite, even hungry when they got to bed. This, as it was with Deanna, is desperate. This is about longing, about flesh pressed against her own. This is something Kathryn thought might exist, but had never proved.

Beverly lets her explore her body and Kathryn's hands run over small breasts, a flat, almost too-thin belly and then hips, soft and full. Kathryn holds there, pulling Beverly closer.

Beverly's thumb glances across Kathryn's breast. Her outfit is old, the cloth worn and frayed. Kathryn feels more of Beverly's touch in the rough fabric against her skin. She aches and her flesh crawls deliciously. She pulls Beverly's hand back up, letting her cup the flesh of her breast.

Kissing down Beverly's neck, Kathryn discovers the sharp intake of air she can create by brushing her fingers through Beverly's crotch. There isn't much time. Sleep is more valuable than latinum here and privacy is impossible. All the exploring will have to wait for another night, another hole in the rock.

Beverly's trousers are old, and the clasp gives way easily. Kathryn slips her hand within, searching until she slips beneath the worn fabric of panties. Her fingers slide through the soft curls of pubic hair, then glide into wetness. Beverly buries her face in Kathryn's neck, gasping in whispers.

The planned elegance of what Deanna wanted and did is nothing like this. This is crude and necessary, like the homemade wine. Kathryn fumbles at first, then finds a rhythm. Her fingers are in and out, her thumb circles. Beverly swallows a moan, kissing her to keep both of them quiet. Beverly's fingers are quicker than Kathryn's and she doesn't have a wall to lean against.

"Hang onto me." Beverly's voice is so close it could have been inside of her head and Kathryn obeys.

Beverly presses into the wall, leaving against it as her legs shake and her hips roll against Kathryn's hand. Kathryn clings to her with the hand she has, leaning into her and Beverly's nimble fingers. Her own breathing goes coarse, jagged like the rock behind them. Then she has tears in the corners of her eyes, her head shifts into that foreign plane and she rests her head, gasping on Beverly's chest.

They slump together, still tangled, dust sticking to damp hands.

Beverly kisses her this time and when Kathryn kisses back, she knows she's reciprocating because she needs this. They both do.  
=====/\=====

 _Jean-Luc_

He lounges on the edge of the pool. He's nude, but the air is hot and wet enough that any clothing would be distinctly uncomfortable. She prefers it that way. The cold marble of the pool the Empress refers to as a bath makes a pleasant contrast with the hot water. He lets his feet soak up the heat of the water while the skin of his back absorbs the cold. Above them, precious jewels align and realign in a constantly changing matrix. The Iconians called it a form of abstract art, pleasing to the mind and soul. The Empress thinks it suits the space.

Jean-Luc makes it a point not to argue with the Empress and he knows only too well how short the lives are of those who would argue with the High Inquisitor. He was about to return to his ship, cargo delivered and payment accepted, but she thought he might like to meet the Intendant of the Andorian Sector. He usually makes it a point of prudence to spend as little time on _Silence_ as possible, but he can't resist the chance for information. He has the great distinction of being one of the few minds Lwaxana Troi, High Inquisitor of the Alliance, finds dull. She's plumbed the depths of his psyche and found him exactly what he seems, a rogue with a taste for latinum, tombs and all the sex he can collect on the way.

The High Inquisitor would be an attractive woman, were she not the most dangerous being in the galaxy. There was a time in his life when he could have easily succumbed to her. He could have lost faith and giving away everything he's learned and been able to pass to Will and his quaint hopes of a rebellion. He doesn't mind helping the courtesan, Will's a good man and a friend in the Terran rebellion might help him some day. He knows it's not going to work, but he's in a unique position to try.

He sits up, sliding into the deep, perfumed water. Grimmali lilies, plants that crave the heat of the pool, float around him, dark against the water. Lwaxana floats a few metres away, suspended in the water, eyes closed. He gives her nude for a cursory glance, reminding her that all he can think about in her presence is the beauty of her physical form. She knows that about him, and his honesty has gotten him far. He needs to get a look at this Intendant Miral, just so he knows one more face to pass on to Will, for all the good it'll do.

The door opens from the top, letting a finger of light grow into a ray, then a splash full of two figures in Klingon armour. He can recognise the bristling style of it from where he is. One is much smaller. An aide? A protege? When they hit the light, he realises the smaller one is a child. She's just through adolescence, a Klingon girl ready to whet her first blade in the blood of her enemies, and yet, there's something different. Her forehead is less pronounced. She has Terran blood and as much as that fact fascinates him, it grabs the High Inquisitor's attention all the more.

She rises from the water, a dark Venus with eyes that reflect the end of the universe. She stands nude and dripping on the floor in front of the two heavily armoured Klingons. Lwaxana stares down the elder one, the Intendant, and the weight of her mind sends the proud warrior to her knees, gasping for breath. Lwaxana turns on the younger one, expecting her to fold just as easily. Jean-Luc's seen men and women crumple and vomit under the mere brush of Lwaxana's mind. This little one meets her gaze and holds it.

She has nothing to hide: the ultimate armour against a telepath.

Lwaxana raises a hand, a goddess blessing her faithful. When the child sinks to her knees, she does so with dignity.

"You do honour to your Empress, B'Elanna, daughter of Miral." Lwaxana extends her hand. The child kisses it quickly, but she retains some of her composure. Her mother has fared less well. Some secret Miral carried gave Lwaxana a weapon to wield as she carved her way through her mind. The Intendant will recover, but she will never face the High Inquisitor with anything less than the pure terror of the haunted animal. The mind can forget pain, but the agonies Lwaxana can produce are instinctual. They bond with the mind as if they've always been there.

He slips away while Lwaxana speaks for the Empress. Guinan is busy with the workings of the fleet, and lets her High Inquisitor handle her visitors. Lwaxana is enough to terrify all who come, and that's on a sane day. When she becomes too strong for her own incredible powerful mental shielding, her thoughts storm outward, controlling all they can affect. He's heard tales of entire vessels full of the mad before the Empress surrounded her with the Ferengi and the Breen.

How the Empress resists her, he'll never know, but he's had a taste of Lwaxana's unfettered mind, and he's learned to keep his visits brief. He watches Intendant Miral hand off her daughter, and the young woman removes her armour with an admirable lack of fear. She may be someone, someday, this B'Elanna.

If he plays his cards right, dodges death for a few more years, he might just be around to see it. He puts the thought aside, filing it into the vast library of his mind. Sometimes he wonders if he could have been a poet, given another universe.

He retrieves his clothing from the outer chamber. She finds him as he pulls trousers up over damp thighs.

"Enjoy your bath?"

"I did," he leaves a pauses before he adds the honorific, "your Serene Highness." He knows the Empress by voice so he doesn't have to turn.

"The Betazoid resonators you found are priceless."

The relics were buried in the tomb of a daughter of the First House; the tomb itself nearly lost to the jungle and the ruins of a civilisation on the wrong side of a war. He has no wish to have his psyche destroyed and he wouldn't even have considered hunting psionic resonators without the Empress's personal consent.

If he'd been caught, even she couldn't have saved him from the Betazoids who have no choice but the pray such horrors stay buried in their past.

"I live to serve, Serenity."

"You say that, Picard, but I wonder if you serve me in order to remain living."

Her robes sigh as they rub together. She circles him, perching on the stone bench in the middle of the room. Stone would be out of place on another ship, but Listener ships seem to be carved from it, giving them the appearance of tombs rather than starships.

"You found something that interested you."

"B'Elanna, Serenity. She faced your High Inquisitor without fear."

"She's young."

"The young can go far, because they have much to learn and ears open to hear. Or so I've heard, Serenity."

Her lips curve upwards in what might be a smile. "I'll see that she learns. Now go, pirate, and find me more Iconian artefacts. I'd like a full set of Iconian ceremonial goblets."

If he found that, he could retire anywhere in the empire. He bows, lowering his head far towards the floor. "It is my pleasure to serve, Serenity."

She passes her hand over his head in benediction and disappears into the darkness. Jean-Luc lets air back into his chest. He's had the curse and blessing of the Empress's service for more than a decade, and still she has yet to tire of him. In the beginning, he thought she may have wanted him for more than his skill at finding rare objects, but the Empress's interests don't lie with him.

All for the best. He pulls his vest on over his tunic and heads for the long corridors to his ship. Without Will, it's quiet on the _Ressikan_. The need for passing messages required Will's presence. He needs little pretext to visit Intendant Ro and her consort. Both of them have made use of him in the past. Courtesans travel more discreetly than subspace.

Jean-Luc transmits his request to leave the docking bay and plots a course for Mnonogan, the dusty rock closest to Terok Sa. With a little luck, Will has already found the contact in the cell there. Someone called Chakotay, who had known where to find the scientist. He activates his subspace array, transmitting just before he drops into warp to hide the signal.

Alynna will start readying their cells. It's a greater risk than any of them, than any of their species has taken, but it has to be tried. The Terran Empire was wrong, but this Alliance is still far from perfect. Trading the rights of one set of species for the rights of another is still wrong. In another universe, someone would care about that. Maybe even he would care.

Fighting for a cause is more of a luxury than the Inquisitor's bath. Equality comes from force and threat, not from some great utopian set of ideals. A ghost fleet should be enough to change the power dynamic, if it still exists. He's always been a gambler and the thrill of the unknown races through him. He's never bet on a fairy tale before.  
=====/\=====

 _Laren_

Deanna shakes out her hair, running fingers lazily through the curls. She rolls out of bed, reaching for her panties. "This better be good."

Seska waits by the door, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She's learned to be more subtle, but her impatience is written in her feet.

Ro turns from her desk, watching Deanna slowly pull her tight black dress over her body. She's been up for an hour or so, drinking raktijino while she pieces together bomb fragments. Cardassians give up too easily. There's a reason why Kathryn was in centre of the blast and it wasn't bad luck.

"Report, Seska."

"The boy has a potential location for the JthellnRuk fleet. He's been babbling about dark matter masking the presence of the negative energy density associated with wormholes. He started talking about Raychaudhuri's Theorem and violating null gravity conditions."

"Scientists." Deanna tosses her hair back, donning the red and black cape of the Empress's Inquisitor. She doesn't often wear it, but it trails on the floor behind her, leaving a wake of shadow. "They either have nothing to say, or they can't stop talking."

Laren takes a last glance at the information on her monitor. She knows this blast pattern. She's seen it before. There's a Terran down on that damn planet who just loves blowing up things that are important to her. She'd love to get her hands on whoever it is, but sending Seska may have a similar effect, if a messier one.

"What did your informant say about the explosion in the market?"

Seska grins, that dark hunger sneaking into her eyes. "They're planning a diversion, tonight, to cripple the Alliance power station."

Laren locks the computer console and follows Deanna. "Prevent them."

Seska bows her head, a rare show of obedience. "Yes, Intendant."

Without looking back, Laren adds, "if you find Janeway, I want her alive. The bomber should be etched."

"My pleasure, Intendant."

In the corridor, as Seska heads in the opposite direction, Deanna leans close to Laren. "You've just made her day."

"I don't need the bomber." Laren flicks her eyes as her soldiers salute her and the slaves flee her approaching footsteps. Deanna receives most of the terrified looks, but Laren prefers it that way. Let them think her the merciful one.

"We might need Janeway, the boy is so young."

"He's off the Alliance chart for aptitude."

Ro smiles as they enter the lift. "Doesn't that make you wonder? All the power of the Alliance, and we depend on the genius of slaves."

"Cardassians make clever scientists, but they'll spend half their time telling you just how clever they are, instead of doing anything useful. Klingons would rather destroy a computer console than input data into one, and Bajorans make too excellent of administrators. You're such-" Deanna runs a finger across Laren's cheek, "-accommodating people. Which part of the Alliance would you waste on laboratories and science projects when you can use slaves? They ask so little in return. Terrans have so little ego, you can reward them with a bed and a warm body to share it with."

Turning towards Deanna's hand, Ro nips at her fingers. She's right, which is why Laren's kept her so long, both as a lover and an inquisitor. "See if you can tease out of his little mind who his parents are this time. I'd love to be able to have another few like him."

Deanna nods, pulling her hand back and beginning to centre herself. She seems to sink into her cloak as she does, falling away into the darkness. She'll be like Ro's own shadow as they talk to the boy, plucking what they need to know out of his mind a bit at a time. He might not even notice.

Laren nods to the guards outside and heads into the lab. Wesley, the little genius, can barely contain himself as he throws him on the ground at her feet, babbling about what he's found.

Slowly, she calms him and draws out what's important, through the quantum physics and theorems, he manages coordinates.

"Of course, you'll need to alter your sensors so you can even see the ships, and then you'll need a particle dispersion field, to keep your vessel from being pulled in. If you give me access to your shield schematics, I could start working on it. It's really not that hard, ma'am. Not when you know what to look for."

Ro finds Deanna's eyes and when the Inquisitor nods, she agrees with the boy. "I'll input my security code."

Wesley stands back from the console, politely looking away. He doesn't care about the code, he just wants to get back to work, back to his data.

Laren keys in her personal code, opening the computer up for him. She steps back. "All yours, Wesley."

He nods but his mind is on the computer and the task at hand. Laren steps back, letting him get to it.

Deanna leans close. "He's right on the tip of it. His mind's at warp."

"He's scored the highest on the Alliance Intelligence exam in the last twenty-six years. He's a singular asset."

"Born of a slave."

Laren shrugs, leaning in to rest her chin on Deanna's shoulder. "Slave, concubine, pirate…we don't really know."

"And that intrigues you." Deanna toys with her ear, running her tongue across the lobe.

"You're the daughter of the Empress's most revered Inquisitor. My father was a colonel, my mother the assistant of an Intendant. We should do well in life, we have the genes. This boy, he's no one. He's a nothing, a Terran, yet he's going to bring us the ghost fleet."

"Wonderful how things work out, isn't it?" Deanna's dark eyes gleam with promise.

Laren has to nod, wondering what Wesley will need as a reward. Maybe he'd like a ship, or a girl of his own, perhaps a boy: she'll ask Deanna to search his mind. She'll know what he wants.

=====/\=====

 _Beverly_

She's starting to get accustomed to waking up in Kathryn's arms. She's shared her bed before, such that it is, for warmth and against the loneliness. It's nothing new to have a head pillowed on her chest. The part that's gotten to her is the smile Kathryn has when she wakes up. It's not a courtesan's smile like the confidant one Will Riker has when he slips from bed, or a pirate's lazy grin like Jack or Jean-Luc.

Kathryn seems almost afraid Beverly won't be there and that innocence tugs at her. When she kisses her awake, she wants Kathryn to know she is there, that she'll be there tomorrow.

Chakotay must have known this would happen. He's too practised in the ways of Inquisitors not to understand how Beverly's mind works. Everything he told her to do, how to play Kathryn's emotions, played on her own until she was caught in her own lies, turning them true. It's a gift, she knows that now, but she would have fought him with all she had if he'd told her the truth.

They eat pancakes, like the ones Jack made and Kathryn's fascinated by the sugar. Their coffee is barely more than black swill, but it's one of the better breakfasts Beverly's had since leaving the _Ressikan_ and Jean-Luc's pirates. She'd tried to raise Wesley quietly, not knowing he'd be the a genius more precious to the Alliance than his weight in latinum. If she'd stayed with Jean-Luc, turned her son pirate instead--

She can't think that way. Wesley must be like Kathryn, an innocent consumed by his work. He's well-fed, healthy, like Kathryn is. He's safe, wherever he is and that's all she can hope for.

Chakotay draws in the dirt, preparing to go over the plan once again as Kathryn returns to her work.

"I'll get it today." Kathryn kisses her sweetly. "You'll see. I'll have it all figured out by the time you get back."

Beverly holds her tight for a moment, then releases her. "I expect to be amazed."

"Aren't I always?"

She watches her go, losing herself in the fall of long, auburn hair down Kathryn's back. She's still so innocent, so free with her love and affection.

Chakotay touches her shoulder, drawing Beverly back to her dark reality. "You've done well."

She meets his eyes and behind the steel he's proud of her. He wants her to have Kathryn and Kathryn to have her.

"You had her, didn't you? Back on the Intendant's ship." It's the only way he could have known Kathryn's heart as well as he does.

He crouches over the dirt, adding detail to his diagram. Beverly kneels beside him, waiting.

"The Intendant likes to reward her pets." He knew from the moment Beverly went out to steal Kathryn away how innocent she was and what passion lay within her. "I knew she had a good heart." Chakotay looks into her, the way he stares when he wants Beverly to see something within herself. "You're a good match for her."

She nods, taking that idea and folding it into her heart. It's been nearly a decade since she let herself think about what lies in the heart of a lover. Not that she's been lonely, or that her bed's too often empty, but this is different, something she'd forgotten existed within her.

Tom and Harry sit in the dirt, still half-asleep over their breakfast. A Klingon has left a bite on Tom's neck, but he has a cheerful grin for Beverly when she notices. They only have a small part to play, but Chakotay likes them to listen.

"Beverly will set charges here, here and here." He taps the diagram, marking places around the power station and the market place. "We need the Alliance's attention to be here, away from the spaceport so we can get our people onto Terok Sa. If the Intendant has to evacuate her people, it'll be easier for us to sneak ours with."

"Be careful." Tom warns, losing his smile. "Seska's down on the surface today."

Beverly looks to Chakotay and he nods.

"She was on the last transport down from the station."

"Does she know anything?"

"Sources say no." Chakotay studies the drawing, adding a second escape route. "But, she's eluded our sources before. You'll need to be careful."

"We want you back." Harry's concern is bright in his eyes.

Tom's face is darker. "Preferably un-etched."

"That would be nice." Beverly looks at the diagram again. Three sites, three bombs, easy to set then she'll get out. It'll be simple as long as she stays away from Seska. If Seska stays by the spaceport, she should be fine in the power station. It's always less guarded.

She nods to them. "I'll be back in a few hours."

"Break a leg." Tom winks, cheerful for her benefit.

Chakotay touches her shoulder again, reminding her with his cold eyes what fate awaits her at Seska's hands.

Beverly grabs her bag and double checks the bombs within. "It'll be a special performance, one night only and I'll bring down the house."   


* * *

She sets the first two, one inside a dusty panel and the second under a piece of conduit. The Klingons ignore her other than occasional leers at her torn clothing. She chose the tunic with the rip around her stomach for a reason. Skin means more than her face. Beverly hasn't seen a Cardassian yet and that's a small piece of luck. A Cardassian might do more than sneer and speak lewdly.

Staying close to the wall, she counts the steps to the junction of the corridors. A coolant line runs just behind the wall, and if she can plant the charge right, the power station will be a smoking ruin. She drops her bag, letting spanners and tools scatter across the floor. It'll take her some time to pick them all up and no one questions a clumsy slave. Beverly wraps her fingers around the bomb, ready to set it against the wall under a piece of loose paneling. No one will notice it, not in the half an hour it'll be there.

She keeps her eyes on what her right hand is doing, ignoring the left. The bomb latches to the wall, she picks up the rest of the tools and stands, ready to get as far from the station as possible. She turns left, down an empty corridor, then right into a cargo area. Two more corners and she'll be out. Ten more minutes and she'll be away.

She's almost gone when cold metal runs up her back, resting against the bare skin of her spine. The armour pressed against her is Cardassian, cold and smooth like scales.

"Stop."

Beverly stops, lowering the bag from her shoulder to free it if she has to run.

"Turn and look at me, Terran."

Keeping the bag of tools, Beverly turns slowly. The knife traces along her waist.

"It is you, isn't it?" Seska's voice is full of triumph. "You're older, dirtier, but it's you." Seska leans in, pressing the knife firmly against Beverly's chest. "Gul Madred's been looking for you a long time and that pirate, Picard, he's not going to save you this time. He's far, far away."

Beverly heaves the bag up, trying to hit Seska with the heavy tools hard enough to escape. Seska moves too fast, feeling Beverly's motion before she connects. Seska hits her hard in the solar plexus with the flat of the blade. The armoured side of her fist slams into the side of Beverly's head and darkness mercifully puts thoughts of etchers out of her mind for now.


	4. Chapter 4

_Kathryn_

She cracked the theorem just before nightfall. Dark matter wasn't the answer. Something wasn't in the M.C.H.O.s, something was behind them, obscured. She nearly missed it until she found the stray tachyons. There's something in the darkness, something hidden. Something with enough mass to be just visible through the dark matter around them.

She stares at the console, blaming the equipment. It can't be. After she's adjusted the sensors, programmed them to read through the dark matter soup, she has hull signatures, even the faintest hint of power.

"Starships."

Four huge vessels, each kilometres long. It's a carrier group, an El-Aurian attack fleet. Something that hasn't been seen in the galaxy for centuries. She restarts the console twice, not trusting what she sees.

This was what Ro wanted. It must be something only the Empress knows about. Kathryn's heard stories about Listener ships. The great El-Aurian fleet disappeared, went to transwarp and was never seen again. She's heard whispers, more ghost stories than history. The El-Aurians were at war. They fled the far side of the galaxy, the Delta Quadrant, to build a new life here.

Some made it only to be devastated by an unknown enemy. She'd gone looking through forbidden files, trying to find something, but all that she could scour from the computer was an obscure reference to sentient cybernetic organisms.

She meant to go back and check, but she got distracted. She should still be able to read Terok Sa's computer. If her remote login hasn't been cleared from the backup system, she should be able to get in. Cardassian computer programmers are too lazy to remove everything. It's only been a few weeks and it should still be there.

Kathryn reroutes the long range sensors, twisting the old system to be what she needs. Hacking in to the Terok Sa library computer is far too easy. The Intendant's computer security is worse than Kathryn thought.

She has to write a worm to find the data. It's the work of moments and she sends it off, tapping her fingers on the console. Kathryn retrieves her cold coffee from the floor and gulps the rest of it. She barely has time to swallow before she's in. The console chips, ready to provide data.

Nearly dropping her cup, she clings to the old metal of the console. The worm was more successful than she thought, dragging up old files from several computer system upgrades ago. One is an autopsy report about a body so integrated with machines that nanites lived in the blood, able to repair some tissues after death. Another file simply lists incidents of missing colonies, places that were scooped from the earth leaving nothing but craters behind.

Kathryn's so engrossed in the article that she doesn't realise that the stardate is over three hundred years ago. She taps the console, trying to find the location of the file. The registry takes a moment, the reports back that it is an externally linked file, stored on the main computer core of the _Silence_.

 _Silence_ had to be in orbit for her to achieve a remote uplink. The Empress's flagship was in orbit already?

Kathryn cut the uplink, not even bothering to copy the files. Some species that could eat whole colonies was connected to a ghost fleet hiding behind a series of halo objects. None of the Alliance ships matched El Aurian design or technology. If the race that had destroyed their colonies and their ships was still out there and came for them now, the Alliance would be destroyed.

Were they watching the fleet? Had anyone else figured out what the ghost fleet was and how to reach it?

She jogs out of the old lab, looking for Beverly or Chakotay, someone who will understand what to do with what she's discovered.

Harry looks at her with fear dark on his face before he turns his head down towards his boots. "The Alliance took her."

"What do you mean they took her?"

Tom reaches for her shoulder, trying to calm her. "Beverly didn't come back. Chakotay's on his way to the station. I can try and find Tuvok or Riker to see if they've heard anything. Beverly always comes back on time."

Harry nods, eyes wide and white. He really is just more than a child. "Someone, one of the pirates might be able to find her."

"Pirates?"

Harry stands straighter, relieved he has something to offer. "We trade with them sometimes. They're Terrans, but they're free Terrans. I know where he likes to keep his ship."

Tom grins, now optimistic. "Better than that, I know where to find Riker."

"Riker?" Kathryn turns to Tom, puzzled. "Will Riker's no pirate."

"He's lots of things."

"Including whoever you want him to be."

Tom nudges Harry. "Nothing wrong with being good at what he does."

"You're good at who you do."

Kathryn glares at both of them, unable to believe that now they're arguing. "Look, I know Will and don't care what he does or who. If someone's taken Beverly, we need to get her back."

"I need to check the power station. Beverly got in, I know her route. I'm good with her devices." Harry looks to her for acknowledgement and the realisation that this is her mission now shivers through her.

"Go, be safe." What else can she say? What does a leader say? Make him know she believes in him. "They should be overconfident now that they have her." She pats his shoulder, wishing she could do more.

Chastised, Tom nods and heads towards his tent. "Will should be in with the other courtesans, I can get you in, but you can't come dressed like that. You need to be clean, to smell nice, and I'll have to come up with something to do with your hair."

Kathryn touches her head. Her hair's up tight in a bun, the way it usually is. "Fine. I'll wear whatever you want, just get me to Riker."  
=====/\=====

 _Beverly_

She's lying on a table, something cold and metal. The right side of her head throbs and there's a faint buzzing sound that must be generated from inside of her head instead of outside. Concussion, but if she's where she thinks she is, that's the least of her problems. Forcing her eyes open, Beverly looks up into the single point of light. Her vision's slow to clear, but she knows where she is.

She's dreaded being in a room like this since Jack died in one. A laser scalpel makes a neat incision, getting in so a neural pressure regulator can clear her concussion. Something hums, a dermal regenerator at work against the wound on her head. The pain fades, taking the fuzziness with it. She's acutely aware of where she is again and her terror is that much sharper. Cold sweat forms on her skin between her back and the table.

"Is she awake?" The voice to her left is Cardassian, soft and full of practiced charm. "Can't let her sleep through our little mapping session. She'll get so much more out of it if she's awake."

The Cardassian face looms over her, a male, middle aged with a mirthless, hungry smile. The hands that wielded the medical equipment belong to another, Seska. For all the time Beverly and her friends have feared Seska, she's not the master here.

"So you're our little bomber. The one who keeps blowing up the Intendant's property. She'll be so pleased to know we've mapped out your mind and we know where your little trouble causing devices are."

There's no point in arguing with them or fighting the machine. Wether she struggles or not the essence of her mind will be torn open and illuminated in excruciating detail. Jean-Luc compared it to a light blasted into the darkest corners of his mind. His life flew past without substance or context, memories he had no knowledge of recurring as if they were real again with the force of a phaser blast.

She won't beg. She won't give them the satisfaction. Her palms are clammy and a knot of fear burns in her stomach like liquid metal. She could rage and cry out, curse them and swear she'll never break, or she could save the energy. Maybe she'll live through this.

The tiny spark of hope fades, going out as the machine warms up above her head. For a moment she hopes she'll die outright, a few do, and Beverly clings to that thought until her desire for life wins out.

She wants to survive and that surprises her. Is wanting enough? Can she will her way through the etcher? Is that what Jean-Luc did?

The light above her brightens, becomes an orange glow before it coalesces into one thin stream of light that pours down into her mind. She sees Nana making tea, feels Wesley's hand grab her hair, hears a wall bursting above her head, tastes dust and blood but all she smells is the metallic tang of death. Her life, even the most banal moments, sears through her mind, turning minutiae into hyperreality.

After a second or eternity, she's not even aware if she's screaming or if she's already passed out.

Then it stops. She pants for breath, lying limp against the table with the sudden darkness as much of a shock as the light.

"Your techniques are barbaric. What did you expect to learn, what she wore when she was a child?"

"Inquisitor--"

"High Inquisitor."

"We merely meant--" The Cardassian, Madred, doesn't finish speaking. His protest dies in his throat and it's a slow, gasping death.

"Madame Inquisitor."

Beverly rolls to her side, curling into a ball while she takes an inventory of the parts of her body she has left. She can see her saviour, a woman in an ornate, black, gilded dress. She doesn't even want to process what 'Madame Inquisitor' means.

"Get her off of this thing."

"Madame Inquisitor? I really think--"

Madred grabs her shoulders and starts to drag Beverly off the table, she doesn't have any strength to resist or aid him and she's not sure which is worse, going with the High Inquisitor or staying with the Cardassians.

Seska resists, stopping Madred. "You think the Empress cares about your word when she can have proof? Let us map her mind and we'll know everything she ever thought. All that she was will be in the computer. We'll be able to search a database to find out what we need to know."

The High Inquisitor stares at Seska as if she's a filthy vole rat. "Your lack of precision is nearly as disturbing as your lack of faith."

Madred drops Beverly's shoulders, backing away. She catches herself, sitting up to watch in mute horror. She's spent the last ten years terrified of etchers. The technology takes hours to destroy the mind. The High Inquisitor's solution is far more elegant.

Seska stares at her, insolence her last act.

The High Inquisitor doesn't have to move or speak and Seska begins to shake. Her eyes roll back up into her head, blood trickling from first her nose, then her ears. She's still standing, but it must be because her legs don't yet know she's dead. Froth bubbles from her lips, darkened with blood. Her lungs can't be bleeding and Beverly realises she must have half-swallowed her own tongue. Her muscles stiffen in some sort of seizure then she collapses to the deck, dead.

The High Inquisitor shuts her eyes, centring herself.

Beverly stares over the edge of the table, watching blood pool around Seska's head as the stench of bitter urine fills the room. She's about to vomit, her gorge rising in her throat when the high Inquisitor grabs her face and turns her eyes towards her own fathomless ones.

She's in her head, running phantom fingers over Beverly's mind, melting her fear as if it were frost on the grass facing the sun.

 _"Come with me."_

The voice is inside of Beverly's head, part of her very soul. Her nausea and the cold terror making her back rigid evaporate. She's safe. No longer afraid, Beverly climbs from the table and follows the High Inquisitor's long train out of the room.   
=====/\=====

 _Kathryn_

If the night were any less oppressively hot, she'd be freezing in what Tom's dressed her in. Kathryn's wearing a translucent wrap made of metres of cloth that seems to be without buttons or fastenings. She has a tiny halter top covering her breasts, but everything else is only vaguely hidden in sweet-smelling silk.

He notices her toying with the fabric and explains, "It's Tholian." Tom curls her hair, turning long auburn strands into gentle waves.

Kathryn's rarely thought of herself as beautiful because attraction is an immeasurable quantity. It doesn't matter if she's pleasing to look at, that is not her position. He finishes with her hair, checks the stain he's painted on her lips, smudges the dark kohl on her eyes and daubs perfume on his hands. He expertly rubs it along her neck, down her chest and onto the bare skin on the sides of her breasts.

Staring at him, Kathryn holds still because it'll be over in a moment.

"You have to look and smell like the wealthiest of courtesans or they'll never let you in. Will's of Imperial rank in the ShiXhen. He doesn't just hang out in bars, waiting for patrons, they come to him."

"You're taking me to a brothel?"

Tom shakes his head, grinning. "Cardassians might have something so crude, but this is a Bajoran planet. The Pah Wraiths teach that sex is a sacred union, even when money is involved, their courtesans are vedeks and all serve the Orb of Union."

"So it's a temple?"

"The site itself is a temple." Tom pauses. "You really never learned any of this stuff?"

"I was busy."

"I guess so." He tilts his head, trying to simplify his answer. "Every culture in the alliance has their own traditions. Klingons are military-minded. Only a dishonourable warrior has to pay for sex. Klingons like to hunt, to make it a conquest and if you're a challenging prey, they leave gifts, latinum and silks mostly. Cardassians are on the other end of that. They like to pretend they're seducing you, but they'll prefer to own their slaves rather than rent them. They're the worst because they want to break you and then they get rid of you. Bajorans make it sacred, lots of special incantations and incense, and they tithe to the temple, rather than pay outright. Still, the temple pays well and no Bajoran would dare displease the Pah Wraiths by not tithing when they're done."

"You said Will was Imperial something."

"Imperial is his ranking. He's only available to serve the highest ranks in the Empress's service. Her Intendants and Inquisitors, also those they deem worthy. ShiXhen is his training, he was trained on Betazed, which is incredibly rare."

How a planet of psychotic telepaths have the time to train courtesans is beyond her, but she accepts it. "So what did you make me? Do I have a rank?"

Tom holds up a necklace containing an identity chip. "Picard got this somehow. Imperial rank, exotic training."

"Exotic?" She raises an eyebrow.

He waves that off as unimportant. "Something not traditional, like a priest from Vulcan or an Andorian dancing shen. This chip marks whoever wears it as the Empress's own, untouchable by all others unless she deems it. I don't know how he got it, but it's saved me more times than I'd like to admit. As long as you're wearing this, no one will give you any trouble." He closes it around her neck and steps back to admire his creation. He seems pleased and Kathryn's not sure if she wants to know what she looks like.

"I have clients tonight, so I'll come with you." Tom removes a shirt and trades it for an open-chested black one. He can't be much more than twenty and he has an innocent, sun god kind of beauty. "Take small steps, if you need to move quickly, pull up your skirt."

Even though she's swathed in layers, the wrap feels like nothing, as if she were naked in the night. "Will Harry get to the power station?"

Tom shrugs, leading her through the underground tunnels towards the street. "Probably, he's pretty fast."

She walks alongside him in silence, trying to wrap her head around the complicated social norms of an entire world she knew nothing about.

"What are you, I mean, who trained--?"

Tom's quick smile lights his face in the dark alley when they hit the surface. "Chakotay did, after he found me in the street, trading myself for food. He sent me with Riker for a few years, let me learn as much as I can from him. He even got some Betazoid to sign off on my training as ShiXhenza, which means I'm as good as an ordinary person will get to a real Betazoid courtesan." He's proud of that. "It's not what I'll do forever, but it keeps me fed, lets me listen to things that might be important."

Kathryn takes his arm when he offers it, her sandals were designed for form, not function and the street is dusty and uneven. "What would you do, if you could do anything?"

"Pilot." That grin returns. "I'm the best damn pilot you'll ever see."

She believes him. In another world, he might even be a pilot instead of a courtesan. They walk in silence for awhile, until she has to ask. "If you were training Harry, and Chakotay was a courtesan, why isn't Beverly one too? Surely it's better than running around in dark corners."

"Beverly never had the disposition. Too stubborn, Chakotay says." Tom shrugs again. "We need bombers too. She's good at what she does."

Kathryn is good at her position and she nearly found a fleet of ships capable of putting the Alliance in power for the rest of eternity. Between them and the hellfire myth of the Borg, she's not sure who she wants to win.

Ferengi guards scan their chips and usher them into a tall, stone structure of Bajoran design. They pass rooms full of lesser courtesans, fountains of wine with cushions on the floor and silks hanging from the ceiling. The incense is thick and spiced, heavy enough to make her head float.

Tom leads her down a long corridor, passing progressively nicer rooms until they stop before a carved door. He knocks once, then steps aside. Kathryn looks at him in a moment of panic, but he returns to whisper.

"I saw one of Intendant Ro's majors, she'll know something about the Empress's visit. Riker will know how to find me if you need me."

Then he's gone with the Bajoran woman and Kathryn's alone when the door opens. A slave girl, Terran, barely as tall as Kathryn's waist, opens the door and waves her in. Will's chamber is lush, with a fountain of water in the centre, surrounded by trees that grow up into the ceiling to form a canopy both in and out of the room. The columns are all carved wood, dark with age, and the bed in the centre is on the floor, covered in even more silks, some with threads of latinum.

Will kneels by the pool, washing his face in the cool water. He lifts his head, smiling as if expecting her.

"Tell Tom you're unrecognisably beautiful." He raises a hand and another slave, this time a Vulcan boy with a green tinge to his burnished skin, brings him a towel. "I'm impressed, Kathryn."

She has no time for pleasantries. "Seska took Beverly."

"Up to the Empress's ship." Will nods and dismisses the slaves with a wave. "I know. Ro's been trying to find her for months. Taking you made it personal."

"I'm not--" Kathryn stops, because she was Ro's. She was a possession and Beverly stole her away. Does she belong to her now or is she making her own choices? "Will they hurt her?"

Will's voice is gentle. "She might be put in a neuroscanner by the Cardassians."

Kathryn sinks to her knees, remembering what Beverly said about Cardassian neural imagers. She saw the terror in her face then but she didn't want to believe it.

"Or Lwaxana will question her personally."

"Lwaxana the High Inquisitor? What does she care about a terrorist?"

"A terrorist who kidnapped the scientist who found the lost fleet is of great importance to the Empress. If Beverly is lucky, Lwaxana will find her before Seska gets a chance to start."

"Is Lwaxana any better?" Kathryn remembers little about her other than the aura of fear that surrounded her.

"Neuroscanners are crude by design and they're a slow, nasty way to die. Lwaxana can be merciful or unimaginably cruel. She gets into your head, and she might remind you of a pleasant memory, search the depths of your soul, or simply overwhelm you with the weight of your mind, letting your psyche implode."

"How can she do that?"

"The Betazoid brain can be a formidable weapon. She's been a tool of the Empress for decades. The Empress refined her, calmed the mind storms that make Betazoids so dangerous."

"That's why all her guards are Breen and Ferengi."

"Mind storms kill everyone else. I've heard the Empress lost three crews before she made the order. She's never affected."

"What is she?"

Will lifts his identification chip, a gilded necklace Kathryn remembers hanging on the wall above her bed the first time she met him.

"The Empress is El Aurian, and I don't think anyone but her knows exactly that what means. She doesn't seem to age, she doesn't see time the way we do and once upon a time, her people were set to rule the galaxy before--"

Kathryn knows this now. "The cybernetic race--"

"The Borg."

"Borg?" That word wasn't in the files she found.

"The many who are one. They're a hive race, millions of drones with one collective mind." Will slips a belt around his waist, hiding something within it. "They're the one thing the Empress is afraid of."

"What does it matter to us? We've found the fleet, when Chakotay comes back we can activate them. That's what he's after, isn't it? A fleet of starhips, El Aurian starships, those would be enough to--"

Will opens a hidden console and starts imputing commands. "Throw off the Alliance and restore the Terran Empire to its former diseased glory? I don't think that's the plan. Stand in the centre of the fountain."

"The fountain?"

"It's a transporter."

Kathryn lifts her diaphanous skirt and carefully wades to the stone circle in the middle of the fountains. "Where are we going?"

"Where Beverly is."

"And the Borg?"

Will hits the last command and the stone beneath her feet lights up. "I don't know if anyone knows what to do about them."

The transporter whisks them away before Kathryn gets to know where that destination is. When her sight returns from the void between, she's standing on the smooth black deck of the Empress's ship. Will's beamed them into a bedroom.

She turns and he grins. "The Empress's daughter and I have a connection."

He means command codes to beam into her bedroom and Kathryn doesn't have time to ask. "Where's Beverly?"

"You're the computer genius." He leads her to a terminal in the main room, runs his necklace over the board and it lights up obediently.

She's only worked with the El Aurian computer over remote link, up close and personal it's a work of art as much as technical sophistication. After she figures out the interface, Kathryn searches. Beverly might have a transponder, but that system might be encrypted. Her best bet is a simple search for life forms. Thousands of Ferengi and Breen aren't important, Kathryn removes them from the parameters. There are four Terrans aboard, herself, Will and two in the centre of the ship.

"Throne room." Will explains when she points at the map. "With the Empress and the high Inquisitor, surrounded by guards."

Kathryn slams her hand against the console, distracting herself with the pain. "Will the High Inquisitor kill her?"

"I don't know." Will touches her shoulder, his palm hot against her bare skin. "If we can't get to her, we need to signal Chakotay and Picard."

"Why?"

"Picard's our only way out of here if the ship decides to go in search of that ghost fleet." Will opens communications. "Can you bury a signal?"

Kathryn frowns at the options. Everything's encrypted and they're running out of time. "I can bounce the signal through the repeating matrix of the sensor array. It'll be detected, but not for a day or two when someone bothers to read the report."

"Do it."

"What do we say?"

"Tell Picard we've found the ghosts."   


* * *

 

 _B'Elanna_

The Terran woman with red hair, the terrorist, sits on the floor at Lwaxana's feet. She's remarkably calm, even docile and B'Elanna guesses she's been controlled. The High Inquisitor arrived in a violent mood, berating Intendant Ro for letting the Cardassians use their filthy little devices when she had a perfectly good Inquisitor of her own to use.

Ro apologised sincerely, but her nose bled before Lwaxana stopped looking at her. The other Inquisitor, Deanna, seems to be fuming but it's a cold rage. The Empress is distracted with the boy, the one who found the ships.

The boy is younger than B'Elanna, maybe fourteen years old. His eyes are far older than that and he speaks like a computer. He's found a fleet, a ghost fleet and he thinks the ships are still active, there's a homing signal.

The Empress raises a hand from her throne, beckoning the boy to his feet. "And you suggest we follow that signal?"

"Yes, Serenity, we have to get the ships back." The boy stands without fear, even when Lwaxana looks over him.

"Did you reply to it?"

The boy stares his Empress down, defiance raw in his eyes. "The signal asked for confirmation."

He leaves off the honorific but the Empress says nothing. "Did you report to your Intendant before you confirmed the signal?"

The boy shakes his head. "It was fading."

"Did you run the signal through the database, determine who it was from?"

"The signal was type six, classified unknown. I had to run it through a descrambler and two sets of code to clean it up."

"And you replied to the unknown signal, giving them our estimated arrival."

"We've never picked up a type six unknown signal, ever. I couldn't let it fade away."

"Did you report your reply?"

"It's documented."

"You did not report."

"No." The boy struggles, fighting the urge to say something else.

Lwaxana leans forward in her throne, losing enough control of the Terran woman for horror to appear on her face. Something's about to happen, B'Elanna can feel it.

The Empress leaves her black crystal throne, standing to meet the boy's eyes. "What did you find?"

"They sent a signal that needed an organic computer, living neurons, to decode."

"So you took your guards and used their minds."

"It was necessary." The boy remains firm even as the corpses of two Klingons are dropped at his feet by the Breen guards. Their faces are twisted in pain, the skin grey and mottled as if something had attacked them from within.

"What did you discover?"

"The signal was a blueprint, an RNA message that recoded their cells."

"Their bodies tried to make something out of nothing. I think it was organic nanites. They died because they weren't the right species. Klingons were the wrong template. It was unfortunate."

The Empress's expression is placid and calm. "What is the right species?"

"Yours, Empress. The signal was coded for El Aurian DNA. Klingon is too far variant, Cardassian would be too. I require a Terran subject." He drops his gaze to the woman now weeping silently at Lwaxana's feet. "She would suffice."

"You want her?"

"I may require more. She may not survive."

"Then why would you take her?"

The boy looks down at the Terran with disgust. "She is of little use. She is not intelligent enough to serve, and you say she is too stubborn to be a good slave. Let her be of use to me."

B'Elanna catches the softening of the High Inquisitor's eyes even as she frowns. Lwaxana turns to the Empress, meeting her eyes. Something passes between them without being said aloud.

"You know this is your mother."

"Perhaps she should bear other children, if she is healthy. Some part of her genes made me." The boy shrugs. "If that is not your will, I do not see why it is not acceptable for her to be part of my experimentation. My discoveries will give her life meaning."

"Her life has no meaning now?"

"She is a slave. Her life has what meaning you give it."

The Empress looks again at Lwaxana, sharing something silently across their minds.

"What meaning lies in this experiment?"

The boy smiles, an empty, soulless baring of his teeth. "Perfection. The Borg will bring harmony to chaos."

The Empress shuts her eyes and it takes B'Elanna a moment to realise she's shut her eyes in grief. Lwaxana leans back in her throne, hands in her lap. She does something, something with her hands and the woman has a dagger.

The knife slides into the boy's chest before he has time to move away. The Terran woman digs it deep and B'Elanna recognises a death blow. Tears gleam on the woman's face but she's resolute. The boy falls, his heart weeping red onto the black stone of the deck.

Eyes still closed, the Empress actives her link to the bridge. "Take us to transwarp, bring us to the fleet."

Nothing is said yet understanding hangs in the room. The Borg are a united enemy, something even the Terrans know must be stopped. Did Lwaxana tell her somehow? Guinan sweeps from the room, Lwaxana following her. The Terran woman sits on the floor next to her son.

"The Borg would have killed us all." She looks up with haunted eyes. "They're like a virus."

"You don't have to stay, the guards will take care of the body."

"He was sweet when he was a boy." The Terran woman shuts his eyes and backs away from his body, her tears running slow. "Everything was a game for him, something he had to figure out."

B'Elanna could follow the Empress up to the bridge, watch the ship enter transwarp, but she stays with the Terran. It doesn't seem right to leave her alone. She retreats back and sits with her on the stairs up to the Empress's throne.

She's never seen a Klingon cry. Klingon grief is loud, full of death howls and shrieking. This is quiet and the Terran's tears fall silently. She doesn't know what to do, if she should do anything, but she stays. This Terran was brave, she shouldn't suffer alone.


	5. Chapter 5

ZZZZ4

* * *

 _Kathryn_

They find the pirate, Picard, in a cargo bay, his ship in the wake of the great flagship. He looks at Kathryn's costume and raises an eyebrow.

"New friend, Will?"

"This is Kathryn Janeway, she's the one who found those ghost ships you were looking for."

Picard shifts his disruptor to his left and extends his right hand. "Jean-Luc Picard, I've been an admirer of yours for awhile now."

His hand is strong.

"The Empress has Beverly." Kathryn has one task.

Will nods. "She was in the throne room."

Picard hands her a tricorder from his pocket. "She should be all right. The Empress has no reason to kill her."

There's one Terran life sign in the throne room. Picard's is new, but there's one missing. One of the Terrans is dead.

"How do you know?"

Picard's voice is soft and heavy. "I know the Empress and Beverly's death would serve no purpose. She's not needlessly cruel. If we're at transwarp, she'll be on the bridge. The throne room should be empty. Go, find her. Meet us here and we'll beam off. Dressed like that without a weapon, no one will stop you. Fifteen minutes."

Will nods. "Can you find your way back here?"

Kathryn clutches the tricorder. "Cargo bay eleven, shouldn't be difficult. You'll find Chakotay?"

They share a look that means there's more going on than she knows, but she doesn't care. She ties the clinging silk of her dress up so she can move.

"Fifteen minutes," Picard reminds her and she nods.

"Right."

"Good luck."

They head down another corridor and Kathryn has to remind herself not to run. Running won't get her anywhere because the damn dress will probably just fall off. Not running makes her less suspicious and the slaves ignore her. They must have numerous tasks and duties; Kathryn has one. Find Beverly, get off the ship.

Calling _Silence_ a ship takes away some of the majesty. The vessel is full of long, sprawling corridors with ceilings that reached up enough to be part of grand cathedrals. Other species built starships for efficiency or strength in battle, El Aurian vessels were designed to be beautiful and the idea that there were more of them in the galaxy nearly made up for the suffering involved in finding them.

What would it be like to take a ship like this and see what's out there? Kathryn clings to that idea, imagining Beverly with her on the bridge of a ship that goes on forever. They could go anywhere, provided they are together.

She's never had that. Kathryn hasn't cared for anyone; she barely knew her family and she's never been close to anyone. Intendant Ro is her master, the other Terrans she's known are slaves given to her nights at a time as a reward for her service. Beverly is different.

She doesn't have words for the knot in her stomach.

Her necklace gets her through three checkpoints and the final door into the throne room. It's a great circle of stone that rolls open with a hum. The lighting is low and the guards are gone. The great pool of water is still and looks like a mirror set in the stone floor. The air reeks of blood

The body's on the floor, his face up towards the ceiling.

Beverly sits on the steps, her hands on her knees. A young Klingon sits next to her, her face soft. It's possible she's never seen tears. Beverly's run quick and silent down her face.

Kathryn nearly slips when she comes to a stop in front of her. She crouches in front of her, looking up at Beverly. There's blood on Beverly's hands, drying against her skin. There's some on her clothes, but they aren't as saturated as her hands.

Beverly sees her but stares through. "She showed me what was in his mind."

Kathryn catches the Klingon's eye as she reaches for Beverly's wrists, trying to avoid the blood.

"The High Inquisitor."

"She saw something in his mind?" Kathryn strokes the back of Beverly's wrist, trying to bring her back.

"They had him."

"They?"

Beverly rubs her eyes on the back of her arm, forcing herself calm. Her body stiffens. "She put it in my head. Thousands of minds all speaking at once. Wesley was, I mean, they did something to him. He wasn't Wesley."

Kathryn wants to give her time, but they have a deadline. "We need to meet Picard. You have to come with me."

Beverly can't take her eyes off the body. "He got so tall."

Grabbing her bloody hands, Kathryn wipes them on the metres of useless fabric making up her skirt. "Beverly, I need you to come with me, now."

Meeting Kathryn's gaze with dull eyes, Beverly clutches her hands. "We can't let them find us. The voices-- Kathryn, the voices are evil."

"Okay. We'll stay away from them."

That gets Beverly on her feet. "You're almost naked."

"Tom." Kathryn fights back the urge to blush.

The Klingon watches them for a moment, then gets up to follow. "They're the Borg, aren't they? The voices she's talking about."

"How do you know about the Borg?"

"I saw it in the database. Cybernetic organisms, a hive mind. They fought the El Aurians, hundreds of years ago."

This girl is the first Klingon Kathryn's talked to who hasn't sneered at her. Maybe it's her age.

"Thank you."

"B'Elanna." She picks up the knife Beverly used on the boy. It's thin and sharp, elegant like the ship and must be El Aurian design. B'Elanna tucks it away.

"Kathryn." She takes Beverly by the elbow and leads her towards the doorway and the corridor beyond.

B'Elanna follows, jogging to catch up. "I want to come with you."

"With us?" Kathryn almost wants to laugh. "We're running away on a pirate ship."

"You're stealing an El Aurian ship, one of the big ones. You stole the command codes."

That revelation stops Beverly too.

"We what?"

"Someone stole the command codes for one of the vessels. I found it in the database."

Kathryn doesn't even know where to look for that and she's impressed. "Okay, why come with us?"

"I can help you. I'm good with technology, I know transwarp coils and computers."

Nodding, Kathryn starts walking again, letting the girl follow them. "But you can work on those here."

"I can't. The Empress has engineers, real engineers. You don't have any."

Beverly shrugs. "She has a point."

"It's nicer here." Kathryn argues but before she can finish, the girl shakes her head.

"It's not."

"It's safer."

B'Elanna frowns, typing in a code to open one of the doors. "Only until some Intendant decides I'm a threat."

"We get shot at."

"I'll duck."

"Kathryn--" Beverly looks at her and ends the debate. "Let her come. We need the help."

"All right, B'Elanna. You're the new chief of transwarp of a ship we don't have."

Beverly's wan smile is a small victory and they try not to look conspicuous. Two bloody slaves and a Klingon isn't too out of the ordinary. B'Elanna growls two Ferengi out of the way and they're back in the cargo bay with three minutes to spare.

Kathryn holds Beverly's shoulders, resting her chin on one. Beverly's still stiff with grief but Kathryn likes to feel she's helping, that there's a way through. Beverly squeezes her fingers and that's enough for her to believe.   


* * *

_Deanna_

Her mother's mind is full of grey darkness, something that crawls beneath her thoughts like insects. It's an unsettling sensation and she pulls her thoughts back, focusing on the cold, unreadable mind of the Empress and the familiar warmth of Ro's thoughts. Will's here. She can feel his proximity but he might be working, so she pays it no mind.

Transwarp stains the viewscreen green and gold and she glances down at a console as space flies by. They're out past the rim of the Alliance, further than she's seen on a star chart. Laren's thoughts are a tangled mass of speculation and they slide over each other like silk threads.

Kathryn was taken for this and the boy died for it. This secret has been buried in the mire of the universe long enough.

"Scan for other transwarp activity."

The Ferengi at the console shakes her large head. "None, Empress."

"Recalibrate for caeliare waves and scan again."

The Ferengi scrambles to find the right frequency in the database but the Empress is patient. Her aura of fear extends to simple tasks yet Deanna's never seen her execute anyone for failing to complete one. It's a level of restraint some of the lower ranks could benefit from.

"Caeliare waves detected, three-four-eight by one-one-nine, and closing on the target coordinates, Empress."

"Time of arrival?"

"Two minutes, eighteen seconds. The source of the caeliare waves will arrive approximately fifty-three seconds later, Empress."

Her mother nods at that, shutting her eyes and lifting her hands from her lap. She touches the arms of her chair and they open, revealing two small devices, crystalline and carved with ornate writing. Deanna's too far away to read the symbols, but she can hear her mother's thoughts.

Psionic resonators: they've been illegal on Betazed for centuries and all of them were supposed to be destroyed in the last great mind war.

She's heard it whispered that the Empress can find anything, seeing these makes it true. Her mother attaches the devices to her temples, keeping her eyes shut as they send tiny crystalline channels into her mind. As powerful as her mother is, these will amplify her thoughts geometrically, turning a mind capable of storming a ship into one that can reach across the void.

The moment of connection sends a palpable wave of psychic energy through the ship. The Ferengi don't feel it, but Laren shivers.

"Resonators."

Laren leans in close. "How would the Empress find those?"

"That's what they are."

Lwaxana's mind expands, looming over Deanna's like a shadow of a tree, grown long in the fading sun. A tree becomes a mountain, then the sensation of darkness is more like an eclipse. Something that is not Deanna is between her and reality, letting only a fraction of it pass through. Deanna fights, struggling to establish the best shields she can.

 _"No, Little One."_ Lwaxana's voice vibrates through her, as if she were talking inside her cells, creating sound with DNA. _"You can't fight and trying will only weaken you. Let me in."_

Deanna drops her shields; obedience is well engrained. Lwaxana's mind remains over everything, darkening her senses. The Ferengi reports their arrival and the ship falls back into normal space. Four El Aurian ships hang listless in the void, like stone temples scattered by an earthquake. Orders fly around her, more scans and tests. The Empress orders her boarding parties.

One of the vessels breaks away, her engines flickering blue.

The Empress ignores it, focusing on the other three. Their shields drop and boarding parties of hundreds start breaming through the void to the lost ships.

JthellnRuk, the ghost fleet of the Listeners, that which was lost, has been recovered. Deanna shares her mother's wave of elation before fear finds her. Psionic resonators are of no use with technology, even Listener technology. Something else is wrong. Something else is that grey-green dark in the corner of Lwaxana's mind.

"We are the Borg."

There's another ship, another fleet of ships with six vessels, grey blocks of metal and conduit. They circle the Listener ships, scanning with bright green beams that sting her eyes.

"Lower your shields and surrender your ships." The voice is a mass of voices: twisted thousands all speaking as one. "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own."

"No, you won't," her mother says simply. Her refusal is in her eyes and her mind, written on her lips and deep in her throat. Her mother speaks through her and into her.

Deanna's body trembles, readying itself as if to run a marathon. She can feel her mother's mind coiling, feeding on all the other minds on the ship. The Ferengi are immune to her mother's powers, but Laren and the Terran by the door both have 'no' on their lips.

Her mother buys time, turning it to chaos. The Borg have minds, tens of thousands of them, all working as one. If they were ten thousand individuals, Lwaxana could never control them, but they are one. One mind is well within her power, even if it is one composed of many. The purpose is the same.

That purpose is what Lwaxana corrupts. She spreads doubt, enflames fear, dredges up the emotions of the minds on those ships that they'd buried down beneath their technology. Deanna has just the strength to remain herself and watch the maelstrom unfold. Laren's eyes begin to water, then a stray drop of blood runs down from her nose towards her lip. Deanna watches it fall and shares the sensation of heat on her skin.

The Empress continues to command, three of the ships are righting themselves, preparing to go to transwarp. The fourth is crawling away, gaining speed as the engines wake from centuries of hibernation. The Empress pays it no heed, she wants the three.

The Borg fight their containment and their struggles feed the psionic field, making an ever-tightening noose that holds their minds still. Deanna's head sings with the effort of it, screaming within her skull as if her brain could resonate out of the bony case holding it. She gasps, throwing her hands up uselessly to cover her ears.

Her mother breaks concentration for a nanosecond, wasting precious control on saving Deanna's life. "Surrender, Little One." Surrender. Don't fight her. There's a key in that. Deanna drops her shields and welcomes the raw power of her mother's amplified mind into her own. Lwaxana washes over her, charges through like a comet illuminated by the sun. The pain that consumed her evaporates, fading into mist.

Deanna grabs Laren's hand, forcing her mind to surrender, first to her, then to Lwaxana. She's never forced Laren's thoughts before and part of her is vaguely aroused by the sensation. Laren is hers and she'll survive this because Deanna can make her surrender. The blood on her lip slows and the bleeding's stopped.

One of the Listener ships explodes into transwarp, leaving the others behind in a blaze of light. A second begins to glow, ready to follow.

Small minds are drowning. Beneath the deafening roar of her mother locked in the maelstrom with the Borg, there are Terrans, Will among them. She'll always hear him, a fluke of her developing abilities when she made him hers. She reaches out to them, confident in her ability to navigate the rushing around them.

 _"Surrender, let it wash over you. Don't fight. She won't hurt you."_ She doesn't know if they can hear her; Terrans are notoriously dense of thought. They need not die if they open their minds.

A second ship goes to transwarp, leaving the last two, one of the Alliance and the one being stolen. Her mother's control falters and the storm rages even louder, a hurricane of pent up rage from ten of thousands of terrified minds. The Borg are a wealth of powerful emotion all denied release until her mother found them.

 _"Surrender. You can't fight her, she'll win."_   


* * *

_Beverly_

They beamed to the bridge, just having a chance to touch the gleaming consoles before their minds weren't their own. The bridge is full of corpses, long mummified at their posts. Some catastrophe took this crew and now death is reaching out of the void for them. She recognises Lwaxana's mind, but it's Lwaxana magnified and enhanced until she's a primal force. Her mind overpowers Beverly's and that of everyone around her as if they were insects to be crushed.

They're all down, curled around themselves hands impotently on their heads. Will's whispering something but she can't make it out. The universe is only Lwaxana and the other. The other is a mass of darkness and hatred feeding into the storm. Beverly sees it as a black hole, surrounded by the last angry swirls of light, already caught and doomed.

They're all doomed. Fighting this is like swimming towards the event horizon. There's nothing, no hope, no escape and fighting it turns her thoughts to liquid fire, burning through her skull. Perhaps Wesley is down there in the black abyss and this is her punishment for taking his life.

 _"Surrender,"_ echoes through her consciousness, a command from a foreign mind.

He had to be killed. He'd been touched by the voices and they would never had given him back. He had to die; he's better dead than drowned in darkness like the legion swirling around them. She couldn't have known what would happen. She had to let them take him. He died quickly, she's good with a knife. If she hadn't, Lwaxana would have and it's better it was her.

Someone slaps her face, a stinging point of light in the storm that draws her back. "Don't resist."

The foreign mind, the lesser one Beverly doesn't know, agrees with the voice in reality. _"Let it wash over you."_

Let what, the storm? Is this black maelstrom big enough to swallow her and her grief? Maybe it is. She could just let go and fall into the heart of darkness. There's a promise of peace in that. Beverly relinquishes the last of herself. Wesley's death is as much her fault as a supernova. It had to occur.

She's covered in sweat and she's been crying. Her lungs ache, as if she'd tried to breathe water.

Will drags her up, holding her for a moment. "It'll pass, just let it be part of you."

The girl, B'Elanna, sits near her, back against a console, eyes wide. She's conscious so she's through it. Will moves on to Picard, slapping him back as he repeats the same mantra. Surrender is the only option. Beverly drags herself to her hands and knees and grabs Kathryn, slapping her twice. Her eyes flit wildly, as if something horrible is behind Beverly's head. Her lips repeat more of the same, soundlessly begging for surrender.

"Let it go. Let it all go. The darkness won't hurt you."

The ship starts to hum. Beneath the black stone deck, the engines live again. Someone's flying it. Beverly looks up, searching the bridge. Chakotay sits at the helm, steady and firm. He's not in the maelstrom but she doesn't know why.

Kathryn chokes, pulling out and curling up in Beverly's lap.

"It's all right. Let it beat you."

Whatever it is, once it's through it's just a background hum, as unnoticed as the parts of the mind that call for breath and keep the heart beating.

"Fighting it is what gives the resonator power," Chakotay says, speaking over his shoulder. "The more you resist, the more the resonator has to feed on. If you let it win, you can fall to the bottom, out of the waves."

Kathryn sits up slowly, her head still against Beverly's chest. Resting a hand on her neck puts her pulse beneath Beverly's fingertips. She still has Kathryn, and that's her victory.

"Someone else was in there." Kathryn looks to Will, expectant.

"Deanna, Inquisitor Troi, she told us what to do." He gives Jean-Luc a hand up.

The viewscreen snaps to life, showing two black Listener ships and six metallic grey cubes. One of the ships jumps away, vanishing in the green-gold glow of transwarp. The other begins firing, lances of blue energy blast through space at the cubes. Chunks of metal are blown off, gases vent and explode, conduits vaporise and then, even as they're watching, the ship hurt first begins to heal, returning to form.

"I suggest we get out of here, Chakotay." Jean-Luc glances around, making sure everyone is free of the telepathic hold.

Beverly doesn't want to think about what happens if someone was suddenly disconnected. She finds her feet, her knees are weak but they'll hold her. Kathryn takes a chair, already studying the panel in front of her.

The hum of the engines grows louder, the deck seems to lurch forward and they see the cubes begin to return fire. Green energy flashes out, reaching with deadly fingers for the Empress's ship. Everything darkens and the light of the viewer obscures all else before they settle intro transwarp.

Chakotay turns in his chair, reaching for Will's hand as he steps off the console. There's blood on his temples, bright red and tinged pink with some other fluid. Two crystalline discs are on his temples. They look too old to be technology, but there's light within them. He takes a step, then staggers to his knees. Jean-Luc catches his head and pulls the crystalline discs free. Blood trickles red from the wounds but it's the touch of pink Beverly worries about. Something clear is mixing with blood and she can only think of one thing.

"Psionic dampeners," Jean-Luc explains as Beverly lifts one. "Something I found in a Betazoid tomb. Chakotay, you didn't have to--"

Chakotay shakes his head slowly, coming to rest on the deck. He brings his hands to his chest, smiling peacefully. "Couldn't trust myself to break through the psychic storm the High Inquisitor created. We needed the ship."

"Is there a medical kit?" Beverly grabs part of Kathryn's nearly unwound dress and tears it off. It's reasonably clean. She wipes blood from Chakotay's temple but more of the fluid seeps after it.

Jean-Luc stands, looking for the logical place to keep medical tech. If he finds anything it'll be El Aurian and hundreds of years old. Even with a sickbay, she's not sure what she can do for this kind of neural trauma.

"You're losing cerebral-spinal fluid."

Chakotay reaches for her and finds her arm just above the elbow. "The psionic dampeners were designed for a Betazoid, not a human. I'm lucky they lasted as long as they did."

His pulse is slowing and his respiration is slow and shallow. His brain stem could already be compromised. There's no way to fix it, not without taking his skull to pieces and synthetic fillers. She doesn't have those. She can't cobble together a miracle out of dust and ancient technology.

"I can't--"

"We have the ship."

Will nods, kneeling down and taking Chakotay's other hand. "It's going to be a bitch to learn how to fly her, but we've got her."

"Don't let her worry too much."

That's directed up towards Kathryn, and she slides off her chair, resting her head against Beverly's shoulder. She won't know what to say, but that's strangely comforting.

Beverly wipes fluid from his temples, taking the blood off with the scrap of cloth. "I don't worry."

He coughs, almost a laugh. "Of course not. Jean-Luc, give her a good name. Something hopeful."

"She's currently called," he taps a console, " _Samadhi_ , I want to say that means something important but my El Aurian is limited."

"Not too bad."

"I think we make do for awhile."

"Tell Kate I'm sorry that I'll miss her soup."

Will nods, smiling. "She'll be disappointed."

Chakotay's eyes slide shut and his heart beats once more before it stops. Beverly starts to shift position, ready to start chest compressions but she doesn't move. There's nothing to be done. The neurons in his brain stem will be dead soon, if they're not already.

Kathryn's arm wraps around her waist, holding her tight. Jean-Luc touches her shoulder; Will takes off his jacket and covers Chakotay's face. She buries her head in Kathryn's hair, letting her be her shield from the universe until she has the strength to face it again.   


* * *

They bury Chakotay in space. Tom knows some of the words of his people, and the smell of burning herbs hangs in the corridors for the ship. Jean-Luc is poetic, Will makes them laugh and all Beverly can say is that Chakotay was their strength when they needed steel, which is good enough. She'll miss him, but the sorrow in his heart deserves this rest.

Kathryn takes her hand again when she steps back.

After the memorial, all they do is work. _Samadhi_ has docking bays with smaller vessels, an ancient computer and a whole new system to run and understand. Jean-Luc hands over command to Nechayev, a tiny blond woman with one eye covered with a metallic patch, who seems to small for the command chair until she takes it. Kate Pulaski insists on feeding everyone before they tackle the mess of a command structure. They're all rabble, scattered cells, battle groups and courtesans trying to form a fleet.

Kathryn's both engineer and scientist and she works so hard that she's asleep the moment she makes it back to bed. Beverly's never had a bedroom as extravagant as this one, and if she didn't have Kathryn to share it with it would seem too big.

There's hope in the work. People smile more often than she's seen before. There's talk of rights for Terrans in the Alliance, that with this ship they could negotiate a settlement with the Empress instead of fighting a rebellion. The Borg are still out there and their only chance for survival may be to fight together.

Living is the hard part. Instead of trying to keep the peace with her little group, now Beverly's part of a whole, they're even talking about ranks and structure. She sits with Kathryn in the great hold, what would have been a throne room is a mess hall now, and they listen to older Terrans debate things like democracy with Vulcans.

On the ninth day of the new order they're loosely calling the Federation of Former Slaves, Beverly raises her hand into the air and swears to be a member of a society, to render aid when necessary, to do no harm and to take the responsibility of attempting to save lives, if it's within her power. There's no university, no Alliance monitoring of her credentials and there's no promise she won't still need to build bombs. She's a healer in a fledging society that needs doctors, so she'll be the best she can.

Kate swears the oath at her side and they take on the El Aurian sickbay. For each piece of equipment they understand, there are three more that they can't begin to imagine, but the Alliance leaves them to the task. She survives two weeks, then three without staring down death and Beverly remembers that she has a sense of humour.

Kathryn tells her about B'Elanna breaking someone's nose down in engineering and she laughs, startling Kathryn's head off her chest.

"I didn't know you could sound like that." Kathryn's hair tumbles in a mess over her bare shoulder.

Beverly runs her fingers through it, trying to tame it and failing. "I'm not sure I knew."

Kathryn ponders that, kissing her way up towards Beverly's breast. "Do you think it'll stay like this?"

"Like what?"

"Hopeful. Busy, incredibly complicated, but hopeful. Like we're doing something."

"Even Terrans can be dangerous with a ship like this. I'm sure the Empress will be cautious instead of attacking outright."

Kathryn grins at that, looking up. "I didn't mean the ship."

Sitting up on her elbows, Beverly stares at her. "I don't understand."

Kathryn sits up, pulling her hands into her lap. "You and I, we're hopeful."

"Oh." She hadn't considered that. She's never really thought about anything like this. "We're looking forward."

"Together." It's both a promise and a demand and Beverly loves her for it. Kissing her is the answer for today and the tomorrow Beverly imagines is full of light and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for the Classic Trek Big Bang, 2011


End file.
